This is sad. According to reports, a black college student has been critically injured after police shot him in the head with a beanbag round during a protest in Austin, Texas.
20-year-old college student, Justin Howell, suffered a fractured a skull and brain damage. He has been sedated and is in critical condition. “Doctors anticipate that when he wakes up, he will have difficulty telling his left from his right,” his brother, Joshua Howell wrote in The Battalion, the Texas A&M University publication.
A volunteer protest paramedic who was at the scene, Maredith Michael shared photos of what her hands looked like after the police shot at her as she moved Howell’s body to get medical attention.
“I had my hands in the air, I begged for them to help, they said ‘bring him over here,’” she wrote on Facebook. “I told them that his head injury was too severe, he was convulsing and unable to move, that I needed their help. ‘You’re going to need to bring him here.”
The department apologized and said they were not specifically aiming at Howell. “That is not what we set out to do as a police department,” Austin police Chief Brian Manley said, per the Statesman. “That was not what we set out to do this weekend.”
Howell’s brother, demands that the police be held accountable for their actions. “These ‘less-lethal’ munitions are only ‘less-lethal’ by technicality,” he wrote. “My brother’s condition shows what can happen when you fire them into a crowd.”
We are wishing Justin justice and a speedy recovery!