Above: 46-year-old Eleni Bekele of Davis, California,
was shot Tuesday morning during an eviction confrontation
with Davis police officers.
News10ABC
DAVIS, CA – The Davis Police Department says a woman was shot by a Yolo County sheriff’s deputy Tuesday morning. According to Lt. Colleen Turay, the deputy was in the process of enforcing an eviction notice on a 46-year-old woman from an apartment on the 1800 block of Hanover Drive when the woman threatened the deputy with a knife. That is when the deputy shot the woman once, said Turay. The deputy placed a call for help at 10:27 a.m.
Read the rest of the story at CBS13
What motivated the victiom to draw a knife on the officer is not clear to me. It is sad that an Ethiopian was forced to vacate her place of residense because she couldn’t be able to afford the rent for some other reason. What can the Ethiopian community do to help the victim and get the necessary infromation from the victim herself? I may extend my help in the legal area if deatiled information is available.
Ethiopian activist for social justice from Boston, Massachusetts.
This is a sad story. I feel sorry for both the victim and the officer. This an example of the state of America’s economic crisis. The woman is clearly unable to afford her rent (which is very sad on its own) and the officer, who probably did not wake up that morning thinking of shooting someone, was placed in the tragic position of firing a gun – not at a criminal, but at a tenant who happens to be broke. I am relieved that no life was lost. But the issue raises a much bigger question. I have seen many times cops negotiating with dangerous criminals armed with automatic weapons and holding hostages. On this case, when a 46-year-old-woman, whose only crime is not having money to pay rent, is holding a knife inside her apartment (I am glad she did not hurt the officer). It begs the question, could the police have backed-off and negotiated for her to drop the knife? How about if the officer had killed this women? How tragic that would have been for all involved.
Language barrier could well have been a major issue in this case. Unless we wake up and admit to ourselves how limited our English is and demand to communicate with the system in a language we understand the best; tragic events like this one are bound to happen.
I was just in Davis California visiting and my friends were telling me the police in this city have nothing to do since its a very peaceful university town. What a tragedy, hopefully the small ethiopian community in Davis can come together and find some solutions to help this poor woman..and God be with the poor officer too!