A Georgia neighborhood is reeling after the fifth police-involved death in the city this year, and community leaders are calling on the top police official to resign and a federal probe into the chain of shootings.
Authorities said police officers approached Saudi Arai Lee, 31, as he walked in the middle of the street in his neighborhood in Savannah on June 24.
Lee showed officers his weapons permit, raised his shirt and pulled his gun from the holster. At some point, Lee led officers on a foot chase, and he was shot, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations said.
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“Family after family are crying because of sons or their daughters shot down by this police department, and it must stop,” Elder James Johnson, founder of the activist group Racial Justice Network, said at a news conference on June 29.
Details of Lee’s fatal interaction with police are slim. The GBI, the state’s investigative agency, is currently reviewing the case, but Johnson and others in the community say that’s not enough. They want the FBI to review the local police agency’s policies and practices.
“I don’t know if it’s the training or a fear of a Black man, but seems like they shoot and ask questions later, and we cannot and will not tolerate this,” Johnson said.
Lee was from Carver Village, a historic Black neighborhood in Georgia’s oldest city. Several friends, family members and community members lined the streets on June 28 demanding change.
“We need justice!” they chanted.
They also held a candlelight vigil that night to remember the man.
“He was a smart young man, smart. He rap, an awesome rapper. He stayed to himself,” said Carver Village resident Felicia Walker, who took a liking to Lee, calling him one of her “neighborhood sons.”
