He was naked and obviously unarmed. But Anthony Hill, a 27 year old black man in Georgia is dead, killed by a police officer who felt threatened and wanted to go home to his family.
According to reports, DeKalb County police officer and resident white man, Robert Olsen, shot and killed Hill on Monday when he responded to a call of a naked man crawling around and knocking on doors in a residential complex. The scared officer said Hill ran towards him and refused to stop until the bullet was introduced into the equation.
Hill had served more than four years in the U.S. Air Force when he was medically discharged a few years ago, his girlfriend, Bridget Anderson, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday. He was being treated by a VA doctor for bipolar disorder but stopped taking the medication a week or two ago because he didn’t like the side effects, including stiffening in his jaw, she said.
Anderson, 22, said she didn’t notice any changes in Hill after he stopped taking his medication and she’d never known him to behave strangely.
Anderson had been planning to go to Hill’s place Monday evening to cook together and celebrate their three-year anniversary. Instead, she got a call that he had been shot dead by police.
“My heart just tore out of my chest,” she said. “I started screaming his name and saying it couldn’t be true that he was gone.”
Demonstrators remembered Hill as a talented musician who loved the color purple and struggled with mental illness. They marched through the streets for about an hour chanting, singing and occasionally stopping at intersections to sit down and listen to a speaker while police cars blocked traffic.
