Muslim Man Killed by Police for Throwing Rocks

Our investigation shows that on May 9, 2020, an Evans County, Georgia sheriff’s deputy shot and killed Sudanese-American Yassin Mohamed. Mohamed was killed near Claxton, a rural town approximately 200 miles southeast of Atlanta. The incident report says that Mohamed was throwing rocks at the deputies. Prior to this incident, he had several encounters with the police over the previous 24 hours. A video of one of these encounters, published by AllOnGeorgia, shows Mohamed threatening police with a plastic pipe. According to the incident report, Officer Dustin Skipper “attempted to place the male subject into custody, but had to be assisted by EMS personnel. The male subject was handcuffed behind his back ... at that time Officer Skipper noticed that the male subject had urinated on himself."

One of these encounters led to a hospital stay. The director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Georgia, Murtaza Khwaja, asked police to investigate whether Mohamed was struggling with mental health issues. He said, “We're unclear as to the mental state of Mr Mohamed, and until the culmination of the investigation we won't know for sure. What we do know is that law enforcement is treating this as a mental health crisis.” However, Mohamed refused treatment when he was taken to the hospital. Mr. Khwaja said, “it's unconscionable that law enforcement did not place him... under a wellness hold until they were able to transfer him for treatment.”

While the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Evan’s County Sheriff’s department did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for information, the GBI statement about the May 9 incident said that deputies were called in after midnight. When they tried to make contact with Mohamed, he began throwing rocks at the police. He hit one of the deputies, which led the man to fire his weapon. Later news reports indicated that Mohamed was throwing rocks.

The GBI is independently investigating the officer involved in the shooting. It is the 38th officer-involved shooting the GBI has been asked to investigate so far in 2020.