On Tuesday, an East Pittsburgh police officer killed an unarmed black teenager. The policeman, who has recently been identified as Officer Michael Rosfeld, shot 17-year-old Antwon Rose after he “bolted” from a car during a traffic stop, Allegheny County police Superintendent Coleman McDonough said Wednesday. A witness captured the incident on video.
In the last few years, the smartphone-camera video has become the iconography of police violence. Social media has become the homes of these eyewitness accounts, with vigilant Facebook or Twitter users documenting others’ encounters with law enforcement.
In 2016, when Officer Jeronimo Yanez of the St. Anthony police force in St. Paul, Minn., fatally shot Philando Castile, Diamond Reynolds — Mr. Castile’s girlfriend — broadcast the gruesome moments after the gunfire on Facebook Live. Officer Yanez was acquitted in the fatal shooting.
In 2014, when Eric Garner died in a police chokehold in Staten Island, N.Y., a bystander recorded the incident — the confrontation, the tackling, and the strained utterance that became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement: “I can’t breathe.” No charges were filed in the death.
There were no photographers present when Jonny Gammage, stopped for “erratically” driving a borrowed car, died in the custody of suburban police in 1995 on Route 51 in Brentwood. This is one of many ways in which his death was different from that of Antwon Rose. Mr. Gammage was 31 years old, while Antwon was 17. Mr. Gammage was from Syracuse, N.Y., a visitor to Pittsburgh, while Antwon was a native of the East Pittsburgh borough in which he was killed. Mr. Gammage died of asphyxiation, tackled to the ground in a confrontation that involved five police officers, while Antwon died by gunfire. But the story still feels familiar: a young black man left lifeless after an encounter with police, a community blown open by grief and outrage.
We don’t have footage of the moment Jonny Gammage died, but we do have pictures of the aftermath. Here are just a few images of the world he left behind.
In the days after Mr. Gammage’s death, the media documented moments of personal mourning and public collective action. These pictures were taken during the victim’s wake and burial in Syracuse.
Back in Pittsburgh, the local black community erupted in protest.
Two of the five officers, Shawn Henderson and Keith Patterson, did not face criminal charges. The other three, Milton Mulholland, Michael Albert, and John Vojtas, were charged with involuntary manslaughter. None were convicted.
