Sarah Morris carries a picture of her granddaughter, Loreal Tsingine, as she marches with other protestors in Winslow, Ariz. (Photo: Antonia Gonzales)
Family, community members and advocates marched in downtown Winslow, Arizona Friday, July 29, to protest the recent decision by a county attorney not to file charges against the officer involved in the fatal shooting of Loreal Tsingine. The Navajo woman from Teesto, about 44 miles north of Winslow on the Navajo Nation.
“We’re mad,” said Tsingine’s grandmother Sarah Morris. “I don’t care what people say, but we’re mad.” Morris is among family members calling for officer Austin Shipley to be removed from the Winslow police force.
“They’re not doing the right thing,” she said. “If it’s a police man, they’re supposed to care for these people here instead of shooting them right there.”
Shipley shot Tsingine five times last March during an altercation that escalated from a shoplifting complaint. He says she threatened him with a pair of scissors. The Maricopa County Attorney’s office found no evidence of criminal conduct on the part of officer Shipley.
Morris and about 100 other people marched a half mile from city hall to the police complex on the windy, 100-degree day. Many held signs reading “Justice 4 Loreal,” “Stop Violence Against Natives” and “Shipley Must Go to Jail.” Morris held a large poster-size photo of her granddaughter. Cars drove by a makeshift memorial where flowers and candles sit on a sidewalk near the convenience store where Tsingine died.
Body-camera footage, released by the police department just days earlier, shows Shipley throwing Tsingine to the ground as he tries to arrest her. Tsingine stands up and Shipley draws his weapon and aims it at her. A second officer comes up behind her. She walks toward Shipley, apparently holding scissors. The video ends before Shipley fires the fatal shots.
“She didn’t deserve to die like that,” said Alta Barnell, a cousin of Tsingine. At the protest, Barnell helped carry a large framed picture of her cousin holding a child. Tsingine leaves behind a daughter named Tiffany.
Barnell, who has four daughters of her own, says it’s hard knowing her niece will grow up without a mother.
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Another cousin, Janice Yazzie, questions the police tactics used on the petite 27-year-old woman.
“She was just the kind of person that, you know, even though she was in a bad place she always made room in her life to think of other people. We just need justice for her that’s all,” Yazzie said.
The march ended in front of the police department as heavy rain came down. The crowd gathered around a microphone as people took turns talking.
Family members, the advocacy group Red Nation and Navajo leaders vowed at the protest to seek justice for the family, which includes calls for a federal review.
A U.S. Justice Department spokesperson says its Civil Rights Division will conduct a review of the local investigation into the shooting.
