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It’s impossible for Raymond Fowler to explain how it felt to learn a police officer shot his only son after he was accused of taking a few dollars’ worth of fruit, he said.

“Words can’t describe the moment when I heard what happened,” Mr. Fowler said. “Even now as we speak, it’s like I’m in a cloud. This is a very difficult challenge for me.”

Mr. Fowler’s son, Jarrell Garris, 37, was shot by the police on July 3 in New Rochelle, N.Y., a suburb of New York City, after a report of theft from a local grocery store, officials said. He was accused of eating a few grapes and a banana and leaving without paying, the lawyer representing Mr. Garris’s family said.

The New Rochelle Police Department said Mr. Garris was shot when he tried to grab a gun from an officer’s holster. It released body camera footage that shows the events leading up to the shooting but cuts off before it takes place.

Mr. Garris died in the hospital a week later, according to the state attorney general’s office, which is investigating the shooting. The office investigates all incidents in which a police officer causes a death.

“It just makes no sense,” Mr. Fowler said, noting that his son had lived in the tight-knit community of New Rochelle for more than 30 years and was known by several members of the police department. He added that he “absolutely” believed that racial bias contributed to the death of his son, who was Black.

The Police Department said that the body camera video it released was truncated out of respect for Mr. Garris’s family. But the family is leading a chorus of calls from the community demanding the release of the remaining footage.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/13/nyregion/new-rochelle-police-shooting-jarrell-garris.html