Hours After Cop Cleared of Shooting Black Teen, Shots Fired at Defense Attorney's Office
A court found that Pittsburgh-area police officer Michael Rosfeld was justified in shooting a teenager who fled a traffic stop, but his defense attorney’s office was shot at hours after the verdict.
In the widely reported incident, Rosfeld fatally shot 17-year-old Antwon Rose last June after the teen ran away from a traffic stop and Rosfeld “saw something dark he perceived as a gun,” Fox News reported at the time.
Rose wasn’t armed, but two firearms were found inside the car.
The teen was traveling with 18-year-old Zaijuan Hester, who had shot at two men moments before Rosfeld pulled the teens over, according to KDKA-TV.
On Friday — nearly a year later — an Allegheny County Court jury found that Rosfeld was justified in firing shots at the fleeing teens.
Rose’s mother, Michelle Kenney, responded to the news of Rosfeld’s acquittal by saying she hopes he never sleeps, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“I hope that man (Rosfeld) never sleeps at night. I hope he gets as much sleep as I do, which is none,” Kenney said.
She also attacked Rosfeld’s defense attorney, Pat Thomassey, by calling him “racist and arrogant.”
Thomassey also responded to the acquittal by explaining the case had nothing to do with race, according to The New York Times.
“This case had nothing to do with race, absolutely nothing to do with race,” Thomassey said. “And some people in this city have made it that way and it’s sad. Mike Rosfeld was doing his job. He did his job. And it had nothing to do with the color of anyone he was arresting.”
Hours after Kenney slammed Thomassey as a racist, shots were fired into Thomassey’s office.
“Thomassey confirmed to Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 he is unharmed and said he received a call about the shots being fired into the building around 12:30 a.m. Saturday,” WTAE-TV reported.
The attorney wasn’t hurt, but things could have been much worse with the type of extreme rhetoric Kenney used.
Unfortunately, this scenario is exactly what members of the left have been stoking with their anti-cop rhetoric.
Since the start of the Black Lives Matter movement, seemingly every instance when a black teen was shot by a white officer has spurred a national discussion about whether the shooting was racially motivated.
For example, left-wing media outlet Vox covered this shooting by warning about the “racial bias” from police officers and suggested that cops should be trained to deal with their “prejudices.”
The frequent use of racially charged language when a tragic incident such as this happens only emboldens the violent left-wing radicals who are on the hunt for so-called “racists.”
It would appear there’s a movement among some leftists to overreact and behave as if they’re above the law.
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