Arthur Greene
Newly released video footage of the minutes leading up to the killing of Lindani Myeni by American police shows a very different story to the one presented by the police in court.
South African-born Myeni, who was unarmed, was fatally shot in April this year by three police officers in Hawaii, USA, after two tourists called the police when he entered their home.
The officers claimed afterwards that he was violently attacking them. The video footage shows this to be untrue.
The footage also critically shows that the police only identified themselves after shooting Myeni four times. (The bodycam footage from the police starts at 5m;06s in the above video).
The police tried to prevent the unedited video footage, which was taken on a Ring Video Doorbell and on one of the police officer’s bodycams, from being shown in court.
The footage shows that Myeni arrived at a house at 8.07pm. There, he took off his shoes, entered and left when a woman grew upset and called the police.
As he was leaving, he repeatedly apologised to the couple.
On the phone to the police, the woman falsely claims that Myeni had broken into her house.
The police arrive immediately after, and aggressively approach Myeni in the dark, shouting “Get on the ground!”
“Who are you?” Myeni responds.
After tasering him, they fire the four fatal shots at him. Only at this point do they identify themselves as police.
Myeni, who was 29, had only recently moved to Hawaii with his wife and two young children.
In an instance of tragic irony, the parents chose Hawaii because they believed its diversity would make it the safest place to raise their two Black children.
Myeni’s widow, Lindsay, believes that Myeni may have been trying to visit the temple next door to the house he went to, which explains why he took off his shoes and wore an umqhele.
When Myeni was killed on 14 April, the case hardly made national news in America. The country’s eyes were firmly fixed on the trial of Derek Chauvin, who was found guilty of the murder of George Floyd a year earlier.
At the time, a writer for Scrolla.Africa, who is based in Washington DC, wrote:
“I am more fearful of cops than I am of any random criminal on the streets.”
