March for man shot by police takes place on Las Vegas Strip
Four months after a man was shot and killed by Las Vegas police at a Black Lives Matter march, a protest honoring the man took the same 3.5-mile route Friday night.
About 150 people took part in the “Walking in their footsteps” march from Trump Tower to the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse on Las Vegas Boulevard South — the same route Jorge Gomez, 25, took before he was shot 19 times outside the courthouse on June 1.
The group began marching around 8:30 p.m. to chants of “Say their name” followed by calls of “Breonna Taylor” and “Jorge Gomez.”
The event appeared to go smoothly until around 9 p.m. when two cars hit a handful of protesters stopped in a crosswalk at East Sahara Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard South. No one appeared to be seriously injured and protesters who were hit told the Review-Journal they were OK.
A block later protesters were met with security at the Strat who asked them to leave a sidewalk before forming a line to move the protesters.
‘These people are supporting my son’
Several people held signs reading “Trump 4 Jail,” mirroring Gomez’ sign the night he was shot.
Before the march began, Jorge Luis Gomez, Gomez’ father, stood in the back in a “Justice 4 Jorge Gomez” shirt. He was flanked by Gomez’ older brother and cousin.
“These people are supporting my son. This is not just for him, it’s for everybody in this situation,” the elder Gomez said as the march began.
Gomez’s father didn’t speak out publicly about his son’s death until September, but he promised Friday that once the investigation is over, “nobody will keep me quiet.”
Local protesters have often chanted “release the videos” during protests over the summer, referencing the lack of video footage the Metropolitan Police Department has provided to the public after the shooting.
Las Vegas resident Savannah Pryslek, 23, stood with her regular protest companion, Las Vegas defense attorney Jonathan MacArthur, for their 18th protest this summer.
“They’re just trying to scare us,” she said of the line of officers that met protesters outside the entrance to Trump Tower. “That’s why they arrest us, that’s why they gas us.”
MacArthur said the increasing number of unarmed people of color being shot by police makes him continue to protest. He said prosecutors and law enforcement allow police to have a “lack of accountability.”
“It’s not going to go away,” he said of police brutality. “We’ve seen that kind of cycle where a change is made and we have peace until something explodes.”
The march reached the federal courthouse just after 10 p.m. and several people took to the megaphones to demand police release the videos of Gomez’ shooting.
About 17 police cars had formed a single file line beginning at East Clark Avenue and the boulevard while protesters stood outside the courthouse. By 10:30 the march had diffused, with a dozen people headed back to Trump Tower to pick up their vehicles.
Lawsuit filed in August
The Gomez’ family has filed a federal lawsuit against the police department in August. The suit alleges that Gomez had arrived at a protest wearing a ballistics vest and carrying “some of his guns on his person in compliance with” the state’s open carry laws, all without any issues or problems with law enforcement.
Gomez started to run from a crowd that had begun to disperse after police fired “less than lethal rounds” late on the evening of the shooting, the suit states.
Gomez “did not charge at or run in the direction of the officers who were firing and striking him with the less then lethal rounds,” the suit states. He “never verbally threatened any of these officers, he never pointed a gun at anyone, including the involved officers, and he never fired his weapon at any point during the incident, nor did he attempt to do so.”
Police have said that Gomez appeared to raise his weapon at the officers, an allegation the complaint disputes.
Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.