Photo: YouTube
"Minneapolis police has cost my whole family a big loss."
By Alice Kelly — Written on Jul 07, 2021
Darnella Frazier, the teen who filmed George Floyd’s murder, announced that her uncle was killed after his car was reportedly struck by Minneapolis police.
Frazier shared on Facebook that she was "so hurt" by the tragedy and added that "nothing feels real."
Her uncle, Leneal Lamont Frazier, died early on Tuesday after the crash.
"Minneapolis police has cost my whole family a big loss ... today has been a day full of heartbreak and sadness," Frazier wrote in a Facebook post.
Darnella Frazier’s uncle was killed by Minneapolis police.
Frazier’s uncle was an innocent bystander in a police pursuit, according to reports. Officers were attempting to stop a carjacked vehicle involved in several robberies that had fled from a scene.
While pursuing the other vehicle, police entered an intersection and "collided with a vehicle that was (traveling) westbound. A southbound vehicle was also involved in the crash," Minneapolis Police spokesperson John Elder said in a statement.
The police officer involved in the crash was treated for non-life-threatening injuries but Leneal Frazier was pronounced dead in hospital a short time later.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office identified Leneal Frazier and declared that his "cause of death is multiple blunt force injuries."
Frazier criticized the Minneapolis police.
While grieving her uncle’s death, Frazier criticized Minneapolis police for engaging in a high-speed chase in a residential area, leaving members of the community vulnerable.
"It's not fair how the police can just go around killing people... you took an innocent life trying to catch someone else," she wrote.
The Minneapolis Police Department and the wider Minnesota law enforcement has been the subject of scrutiny in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder and the death of Daunte Wright.
The incident involving Frazier’s uncle calls into question once more the police’s ability to adequately train their officers to serve and protect the community.
The MPD Policy and Procedure Manual contains clearly defined policies around police pursuits, stating: “Officers shall not initiate a pursuit or shall terminate a pursuit in progress if the pursuit poses an unreasonable risk to the officers, the public or passengers of the vehicle being pursued who may be unwilling participants.”
Frazier became one of the key witnesses in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd after filming the now-viral footage of Floyd’s death.
Though she was just 17 when she captured Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, Frazier became an unlikely hero in testifying against Chauvin.
But her testimony is made all the more heartbreaking by recent events as her worst fears have, in a way, come to fruition.
“When I look at George Floyd, I look at my dad, I look at my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles because they’re all Black,” Ms. Frazier said. “I have a Black father. I have a Black brother. I have Black friends. I look at how that could have been one of them.”
Now, as she grieves another Black life taken, Frazier’s pain is a reminder of the unacceptable cost of being Black in America and the cyclical trauma that comes with it.
A GoFundMe has been established to help the Frazier family cover the costs and expenses of Leneal's unexpected death.
Leneal was a father of 6 and a grandfather to one.
Alice Kelly is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Catch her covering all things social justice, news, and entertainment. Keep up with her Twitter for more.