Another unarmed black man, Diante Yarber, killed by police in CA

(RNN) – Just weeks after the police killing of Stephon Clark roiled California’s capital, another unarmed black man was shot and killed by officers in the state in an episode the family’s attorney is calling “mind-boggling.”

Earlier this month police shot Diante Yarber, a 26-year-old father of three, about two dozen times, according to an attorney for the family.

The shooting occurred in the mid-morning at a Walmart parking lot in Barstow, CA, about two hours east of Los Angeles.

The incident occurred April 5, but news of it has spread since a report in The Guardian on Tuesday.

“The police took him away for no reason. The police should be held accountable for this. They are sick people for them to be able to shoot someone down in broad daylight,” Brittany Chandler, the mother of Yarber’s young daughter Leilani, told The Guardian.

Yarber was sitting in his car with three other passengers when police cruisers approached. They said they were responding to a call reporting a suspicious vehicle.

In the original police release, officers said they believed the driver of a black Mustang found in the parking lot “was a subject wanted for questioning in a recent crime involving a stolen vehicle.”

They said the driver reversed into a patrol car as officers approached and then he accelerated into a second patrol car, at which point the officers fired on the car, also hitting and injuring a female passenger.

Yarber’s aunt, Aleta Yarber, however told The Guardian he was driving her son’s – Yarber’s cousin’s – car and it had never been reported stolen. She also said she now has the car and that it does not appear to have damage from hitting other cars, as the police report suggests.

The female passenger has since been identified as Marian Tafoya, and her attorney told The Guardian she is “still in a state of shock.”

The attorney for Yarber’s family, Lee Merritt, posted on Facebook on Tuesday and said an investigation has suggested officers were not in the path of the vehicle and therefore should not have used such extreme force.

“Diante Yarber was profiled, stalked and murdered by Barstow PD officers,” Merritt wrote.

Merritt said the officers approached Yarber’s car “lacking reasonable suspicion” and “attempted to box his vehicle in.”

He added video to the post, taken by a bystander, which is shaky but in which a hail of gunfire can be heard. Merritt said the video shows Yarber “reversing slowly away from law enforcement” just before they begin to shoot at the car.

“Training and policy dictates that police should never fire at moving vehicles because it only increases the danger to others if they successfully disable the driver,” he wrote. “This is the worst case of excessive and unnecessary force I have seen in my career.”

Merritt is calling for the release of police body and dash cam video, as well as any surveillance video that Walmart might have.

An undisclosed number of involved officers have been put on paid administrative leave, according to The Guardian.

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