Twitter remembers Elijah McClain as Colorado shooting suspect is arrested without incident
In 2019, Elijah McClain died after a violent interaction with Aurora, Colorado police.
Twitter users are comparing the police treatment of Elijah McClain, who died after a 2019 confrontation with cops in Aurora, Colorado; with the arrest of the alleged mass shooter in Boulder, Colorado last night (March 22).
The mass shooting took the lives of 10 people at a Boulder grocery store and police say one suspect is currently in custody. Authorities have not revealed any details of the arrest nor identified the suspect, but a Reuters video showed one handcuffed man with a bloodied leg being taken away in an ambulance. Boulder Police Department Commander Kerry Yamaguchi said he could not confirm the recorded man’s identity.
On social media, people remembered the fatal interaction between police and McClain, an unarmed Black man, and noted that the alleged Boulder and Atlanta massage parlor shooters were arrested without incident.
“They always take great care to capture these white men who literally massacre people alive. But 30 miles down the road, Elijah McClain was murdered for minding his business ‘cause someone thought he looked ‘sketchy,’” one Twitter user wrote.
“This Boulder, Colorado terrorist allegedly killed 10 people and was apprehended and taken into custody. In the SAME state, Elijah McClain was stopped because he ‘looked sketchy,’ and was killed by police,” another commented. “He did not walk into a grocery store and kill anyone, he just existed.”
Last month, an independent investigation led by the Aurora City Council found that police officers did not have a legal justification for stopping or restraining McClain the night of his death.
Robert Aaron Long, the white Atlanta spa shooting suspect, was arrested shortly after the three shootings last week, which took the lives of eight people. Captain Jay Baker with the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department received backlash for saying Long had a “really bad day” and was at “the end of his rope” on the day of the shooting, and was subsequently removed from the case.
On Monday, Boulder Police said the investigation into the grocery store shooting is “very complex” and could take at least five days to complete. Police have not determined a motive in the shooting nor said whether or not the suspect knew his victims. It’s also currently unclear whether or not the suspected gunman acted alone in the attack.
See video allegedly of the shooting suspect’s arrest and reactions below.