Police in Louisiana shot and killed a man as he tried to enter a convenience store with a knife, authorities said Saturday. The shooting was captured on video, and the state ACLU condemned what it described as a “horrific and deadly incident of police violence against a Black person.”
Graphic video from the incident shows the man, identified as 31-year-old Trayford Pellerin, walking away from officers and toward the convenience store with a knife. Multiple officers, who appear to be feet away from the man, fired at least 10 shots at him,
The Louisiana State Police said in a statement that officers from the Lafayette Department were called to a store Friday at 8 p.m. about a disturbance involving a man with a knife. As officers tried to apprehend him, he fled. Officers deployed Tasers, but they were ineffective, the statement said.
The state police said Pellerin was still armed with a knife when he tried to enter another convenience store, which was occupied, when he was shot. Pellerin was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No officers were injured.
The Louisiana State Police said they were asked by the police department in Lafayette to handle the investigation.
The ACLU of Louisiana demanded an investigation into the killing and identified Pellerin as Black.
“Once again, video footage has captured a horrific and deadly incident of police violence against a Black person who was brutally killed in front of our eyes,” executive director Alanah Odoms Hebert said in a statement Saturday.
“Trayford Pellerin should be alive today. Instead, a family is mourning and a community is grieving," the statement said. “None of our communities are safe when the police can murder people with impunity or when routine encounters escalate into deadly shooting sprees.”
Attorney Ben Crump, representing Pellerin's family, called the shooting “reckless” and his death “tragic.”
"The officers involved should be fired immediately for their abhorrent and fatal actions,” Crump said in a statement Saturday.
The incident was the third officer-involved shooting by Lafayette police since mid-July. State police said a man was critically wounded last month after being shot during an altercation with police. Another man was in stable condition after being shot during a burglary investigation earlier this month.
Kelcie Willis with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this report.
