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Dawit Kelete, the black driver who struck and killed Seattle protester Summer Taylor on a closed highway, was charged with three felonies: vehicular homicide, vehicular assault and reckless driving.
The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office made the announcement on Twitter, where he said Kelete is being held in jail. His bail was set at $1.2 million.
Dawit’s arraignment has been scheduled for July 22.
Today the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office filed charges against Dawit Kelete for the crash that killed one person and seriously injured another the morning of July 4 on southbound Interstate 5 in Seattle. Full statement below: pic.twitter.com/V3sQk9eYsp
— King Co Prosecutor (@KCProsecutor) July 8, 2020
Summer Taylor, a non binary Black Lives Matter activist who was hit by a car while protesting on the I-5 freeway in Seattle, has died. Dawit Kelete, who is black, is accused of being the driver & was arrested. pic.twitter.com/Lr6Jp3BkzO
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) July 5, 2020
The crash occurred in the early-morning hours of July 4 on Interstate 5 in Seattle, where Black Lives Matter activists had shut down the freeway to protest.
Video shows Dawit Kelete careening through a small crowd, toppling several protesters. A 24-year-old white woman — Summer Taylor — died, and another (Diaz Love, 32) remains hospitalized.
Kelete’s lawyer, John Henry Browne, told the AP that his client did not intentionally hit the protesters, calling it a “horrible, horrible accident.”
Browne also invoked his client’s race — which is black — to suggest that it was not a hate crime directed at Black Lives Matter protesters.
The incident became another flashpoint for Twitter grousing, with leftists immediately blaming the crash on a white “racist” — until the facts emerged and showed that the driver was a black man. Oops, narrative fail.
“There’s absolutely nothing political about this case whatsoever,” Kelete’s attorney said. “My client is in tears. He’s very remorseful. He feels tremendous guilt.”
Kelete is a U.S. citizen who was born in the African nation of Eritrea, according to Heavy. His attorney said Kelete lives in Seattle with his parents, who are very religious.
Authorities are still investigating the incident. They say a motive is unclear and that it’s possible that Kelete merely “drove the wrong way on a ramp.”
This incident spotlights the ongoing chaos erupting from the Left’s nonstop protests since the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white cop.
The protests are being done in the name of the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement.
Many black commentators have pointed out that the Black Lives Matter riots are based on the demonization of police to incite a race war.
Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley said the race riots in Democrat-run cities are based on a dirty lie — cheerfully fomented by the leftist media — that white cops are hunting down black men.
“A lot of people out there protesting are doing so because they’re convinced that this happens all the time to black people every day — that we walk around in fear of law enforcement treating us like this,” Riley said. “I don’t think what I saw is representative of either police behavior or what black people go through on a daily basis.”
Riley said the media gleefully promote the false narrative that there has been a spike in racially-charged incidents involving the police because any time this happens, the press obsessively hypes it around-the-clock.
“[There’s] blanket media coverage when they happen because of social media, but this does not mean that this is happening more often,” Riley underscored. “Those two things are not distinguished in much of the coverage. I find that very disturbing.”
Police shot 9 unarmed black people all of last year.
25 people were shot just in Atlanta. Yesterday. And not by police.
BLM says the first thing is a crisis worthy of rioting but the second is not.
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) July 6, 2020
Riley said the media’s overhyped coverage of these racially charged incidents will actually result in more black deaths.
Why? Because the police will stop patrolling black neighborhoods over fears of being called racist. And this pullback will result in these neighborhoods becoming overrun with criminals who will feel free to rob and murder law-abiding residents.
Riley explained: “My concern is that there’s going to be a pullback on the part of police in some of these communities in the aftermath of events like this. Then these communities will not get the policing that they need and deserve going forward. And then you’ll see more black lives lost as a result.”
This is exactly what has happened these past two months since Black Lives Matter protesters demanded that Democrat-run cities “defund the police.” There has been a shocking surge in violent crimes in black neighborhoods as police have pulled back amid fears of being called racist.
NEW: Every single person who has been shot in New York City this July, nearly 100 in total, has been a member of the minority community and 97% of shooting victims in June were members of the city’s minority communities, the NYPD says.
— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) July 6, 2020
https://twitter.com/JFNYC1/status/1280978353936269312
Thief who stole flags from church tribute for war heroes returns them with note: ‘I’m sorry’
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