Striking photo captures woman’s arrest at police protest

Their intent seemed to be to clear protesters from the highway in front of police headquarters.

Outside the store, members of the Nation of Islam renewed calls for boycotts of businesses.

Now, the woman, captured during a Black Lives Matter protest in Baton Rouge in a photograph some are likening to the snap of the Tiananmen Square stand-off in Beijing in 1989, has been named.

Abdullah Muflahi, the owner of the convenience store Triple S Food Mart where the shooting of Sterling took place, is suing the police. The suit also alleges that officers illegally seized his cellphone and did not allow him to call his family or lawyer.

28-year-old Abdullah Muflahi says that police at the scene placed him in a locked police auto for four hours and denied him access to his cell phone, preventing him from contacting his family or an attorney.

Sgt. Don Coppola, a police spokesman, said the department does not comment on pending litigation.

The affidavit indicates that homicide investigators sought the search warrant and retrieved surveillance video from the Triple S Mart a few hours after Sterling was pronounced dead. The Beast reported that Muhlafi never signed a form giving police his consent to conduct a search, and that officers never filed an application for a search warrant.

Evans, the mother of a 5-year-old boy, traveled to Baton Rouge “because she wanted to look her son in the eyes to tell him she fought for his freedom and rights”, according to R. Alex Haynes, who said on Facebook he had known Evans since childhood. At this time, the owner started recording the incident on his cell phone, capturing the shots by the police officers that killed Sterling.

The gathering drew more than 1,200 people, many of whom attended the protest Sunday that also included marches on downtown Memphis streets, including the tourist destination of Beale Street.

Carney and Mackey Funeral Home of Baton Rouge is coordinating arrangements. The graphic video, which was shot from a much closer distance, shows the two Baton Rouge police officers struggling with Sterling.

“The job is to protect us while we are out here trying to protest for our rights”.

Authorities have arrested about 200 people so far over three days of demonstrations.

At times, police have used riot gear and military-style vehicles in demonstrations.

Police said they have dashcam video, bodycam video and store surveillance footage of the shooting that will be turned over to the Justice Department.

The U.S. Justice Department has already said it would begin a civil rights investigation into Sterling’s death, which was recorded by a witness and by the store’s owner. Police made almost 200 arrests in Louisiana’s capital city during weekend protests around the country in which people angry over police killings of young black men sought to block some major interstates.

East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar C. Moore III said Monday at a news conference that those decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis.

They then put the witness into the back of a cop vehicle for four hours, he says, letting him out only to go to the bathroom-and even then, they allegedly made him pee outside of his store while an officer looked on.

Officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, observed the butt of a gun in Alton Sterling’s front trousers pocket while they were trying to restrain him, then saw him reach for the weapon before they opened fire, according to an affidavit that a Baton Rouge detective filed for a search warrant in the case.

Kira Marrero, a 22-year-old resident of New Orleans who graduated last year from Williams College in MA, was the first protester freed from Baton Rouge’s jail on Sunday.

A jail log from the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office showed an Ieshia Evans, 35, was booked on a charge of simple obstruction of a highway and had been released from custody. Twenty-two of them are New Orleans residents, while seven are from Baton Rouge.

Officers took about 180 people into custody over the weekend in the state capital, mostly on misdemeanor charges accusing them of blocking traffic on a major thoroughfare during protests over recent police shootings of black men.

“We’re going to do as good job as we can, as quickly as we can, to try to go through the (police) reports as they come in”, he said.

One officer was hit by a projectile and injured in the weekend protests, authorities said.

Tensions between black citizens and police have risen since last week’s killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, and Philando Castile in Minnesota by white officers, and a retaliatory attack on white police by a black sniper in Dallas that killed five officers and wounded others. Paul on Saturday. And hundreds also blocked motorists recently on part of Interstate 264 in Portsmouth, Virginia.