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| 'Strong possibility' of racial motivation in Baton Rouge killings, police say | 'Strong possibility' of racial motivation in Baton Rouge killings, police say |
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| Police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said on Sunday there was a “strong possibility” that the killings of two black men last week were racially motivated. | Police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said on Sunday there was a “strong possibility” that the killings of two black men last week were racially motivated. |
| Police say the shootings happened about five miles from each other. The first occurred on Tuesday when 59-year-old Bruce Cofield, who was homeless, was shot dead. | |
| The second happened on Thursday when 49-year-old Donald Smart was shot while walking to work at a café popular with Louisiana State University students, Baton Rouge sergeant L’Jean McKneely said. | |
| McKneely said authorities had a person of interest – a 23-year-old white man – in custody. The man was being held on drug charges. McKneely said police did not yet have enough evidence to charge him with murder. | |
| Shell casings from each killing matched and a car belonging to Kenneth Gleason the person of interest fitted the description of the vehicle police were looking for, McKneely said. | |
| Smart’s aunt, Mary Smart, said she was still dealing with the shock of her nephew’s death and could not understand what had happened. | |
| “I’m feeling down and depressed. My nephew, I love him, and he was on his way to work and that makes it so sad,” she said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “He was always smiling and hugging everybody. A lot of people knew him.” | |
| Smart had a son and two daughters, she said. She declined to comment on police suggestions that her nephew might have been shot because of the color of his skin. | |
| “I cannot say,” she said. “Only God knows.” | |
| It wasn’t immediately clear if the man in custody had an attorney or when his first court appearance would be. No one answered the door at his house in a quiet neighborhood of mostly ranch-style homes with well-kept lawns, located about 10 miles from the sites of the shootings. | |
| “He looks like any clean-cut American kid,” said neighbor Nancy Reynolds, who didn’t know Gleason or his family. She said it was “hard to believe this sort of thing is still happening”. | |
| Detectives searched Gleason’s home on Saturday and found less than a gram of marijuana and vials of human growth hormone in his bedroom, according to a police document. After Gleason was read his Miranda rights, he claimed ownership of the drugs, the document said. | |
| Louisiana’s capital, a city of 229,000, is known for its championship college football team and its political scene. A year ago, racial tensions roiled the city when a black man, Alton Sterling, was shot dead by white police officers outside a convenience store. | |
| About two weeks later, a black gunman targeted police in an ambush, killing three officers before he was shot dead. The city is about 55% black and 40% white. |