If people around him knew that he was mentally ill and that this is how he handles guns in his possession, you can't put all the blame for his death on the cops.*
I'm not going to pull what the media did with Trayvon Martin and share a yearbook photo from when he was fourteen to make him look better.
We now have video evidence in addition to photographic evidence to back up the story behind the eventual shooting of Tekle Sundberg by police after Sundberg opened fire on an apartment inhabited by Arabella Yarbrough and her two children.
Basically, it confirms much of what we already knew. It also shows some...I'll say "untruths" rather than "lies" given that a lot of the untrue statements are coming from the mouths of understandably bereft family members of Sundberg.
The facts are that Sundberg opened fire into Yarbrough's apartment at around 9:30pm. To my knowledge, the direct motivation for the shooting is still unclear; but, Yarborough has said that she had a tense relationship with Sundberg as a neighbor with regular tense and awkward interactions, oftentimes about Sundberg playing music too loud too late. Sundberg clearly knew that Yarborough's apartment wasn't empty. Yarborough's statement was that Sundberg waited until she started the sink and started firing based on where he was hearing the sound coming from, barely missing her. This wasn't an accidental discharge -- he unloaded on her apartment. Yarborough called 911. When the first officers responded, Sundberg fired at the police though the door upon the police announcing themselves. The police called for backup and evacuated Yarbrough and her two children. During this process, Sundberg fired again.
This resulted in a six hour standoff with Sundberg locked in his apartment with his music blazing and the TV on. After Sundberg made one more declaration that he would open fire again and came to window with a gun and police snipers finally shot him dead.
It's also a fact that a lot of people are blaming Tekle's death entirely on the police.
Now, even though we know most of what happened and have video footage of it, I think this is becoming a real glimpse into the power of narrative over facts and the mental gymnastics that people are willing to play to win political points.
We've seen the vigils and protests held for unarmed black men killed by police. We've seen the same for black men who were falsely reported to have been unarmed. In this case, nobody (so far as I can tell) has claimed that Sundberg was unarmed. In order to do that, you'd have to claim that police had perfect information and somehow knew whether or not he had any bullets left. So, the fact that vigils are being held for him and the mayor is expressing his regret for his loss and the loss of his family and BLM demonstrators have been on camera scolding and moving Yarborough and telling her to "Shut up" because she's still alive shows us that this mentality doesn't need lies anymore. It doesn't matter that Sundberg was trying to kill a woman (of color) and willing to take her children with her in the process by firing bullets onto her apartment and it doesn't matter that he shot at cops and it doesn't matter that the cops could have taken him out at any time during the six hour standoff and didn't -- all that matters is that cops shot a black man. Context is so meaningless to these people now that it's not even worth lying about.
Sundberg was adopted and his parents are both white. They're parents of a large family consisting of biological and adoptive children. Again, the mental and emotional toll that they must be dealing with is unfathomable. That said, Sundberg's mother claimed that it is only because Tekle was black that he's dead. She's saying that out of grief and personal loss. Any of you reading this aren't looking at this with the same emotional baggage; so, can you show any evidence that this is true? The police spent six hours using non-lethal tactics. The police had opportunities to shoot Sundberg for six hours and didn't until he pulled his gun again. The police, very calmly, asked him to come out with his hands up and stated that there was no desire to hurt him.
Sundberg's father claimed that the police barred him from talking to Tekle. The problem is, there's video evidence that that's false, too. He was seen on the megaphone talking to Tekle and urging him to talk to the negotiators. Even if that weren't true, the police didn't (and couldn't) prevent him from attempting to call or text Tekle.
The parents and one of Tekle's sisters have made statements about Tekle's mental health in blaming the police. To this date, there's no mention from anyone of a specific diagnoses of mental illness. Really, it's a bad argument for any of these cases. When a person is firing a gun and willing to kill innocent, unarmed women and children in their own home, you don't ask whether the guy is a paranoid schizophrenic or if he's a normal guy who flew off the handle -- you just shut down the broken machine before it hurts the machines that are properly functioning.
Still, even if it were true that Sundberg had a sever mental illness and the family knew about it. Are we to believe that all of his parents and siblings and extended family were unaware of his social media? Look at the photo below of Tekle brandishing two pistols in one hand. By the family trying to move responsibility away from Tekle and toward the cops on the basis of mental illness, they should be moving part of the blame onto themselves. If you know that a loved one isn't functioning properly upstairs and you know that he's flaunting guns on social media with particularly bad trigger discipline, shouldn't you take some of the blame?
No matter what, what happened was a tragedy. It's hard on anyone directly involved. The family defending Tekle is entirely understandable, even if their reasoning makes no sense. Still, there's a way to mourn a loss without passing the buck off on others.
When it comes to the BLM activists heckling the would-be victim, there's no excuse. If you side with them, every time you've said "black lives matter" has been a lie.