Who is Surafel Assaminew and what is this site about?
Surafel Assaminew, a thirty year-old African American of Ethiopian origin residing in Stone Mountain, Georgia, was fatally shot multiple times by two police officers while standing a block away from his new home in Marietta on the morning of Tuesday, September 16th 2003. He was unarmed except for a 4 inch piece of wood in his hand.
Surafel Assaminew was a bright and gifted Electrical Engineering student at Sourthern Polytechnic Institute in Marietta, Georgia. Friends and community members knew him as a talented musician, lyricist, and children's book author who wrote socially conscious lyrics promoting peace, unity, and love. Despite the fact that he was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder four years ago, he was determined and steadfast in acquiring his college degree. He was schedule to graduate on December 2003 when he was violently and unjustifiably killed.
On the morning of Tuesday, September 16th Surafel was going through a Bipolar episode and had an altercation with his roomate when neighbors called 911 to report a noise disturbance. Police arrived at the scene and found Surafel standing outside in the driveway holding the 4X4 inch X 4 foot wood block. The officers claimed to have sprayed him with two cans of pepper spray prior to shooting him multiple times in the upper body - in the head and chest. Surafel succumbed to multiple bullet wounds.
To date over 5,500 concerned citizens from 48 states in the United States and 64 countries worldwide have signed a petition calling for a full, open, and fair investigation into the shooting death of Surafel Assaminew. Along with the petition, letters of support calling for a full inquiry were sent to Governor Sonny Perdue and District Attorney Patrick Head from prominent human rights and civil rights organizations such as Amnesty International, NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill), the Citizens League of Ethiopian-Americans, and the African Human Rights Coalition.
More than 300 people gathered at a memorial rally at the Capitol building in Atlanta, Georgia on November 17th, 2003 as the family presented Governor Sonny Perdue with the petition and letters of support. On December 10th, a candlelight vigil was held in memory of Surafel and the event was extensively covered by the media including WAGA- FOX News, WSB- Channel 2, the ABC Atlanta affiliates, WGCL-CBS AJC, WRFG 89.3FM AND Atlanta's WALK 1380 AM Radio show. On December 11th, a day after the candlight vigil, the two police officers who shot Surafel were exonerated by a grand jury. The findings were leaked to the press and Surafel's family was not notified of the grand jury convening or the final decision. An article in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution had previously printed the following statement regarding the date the grand jury would convene: "county grand jury evaluates all police shootings, and Assaminew's case will be reviewed later this month, said a spokesman for Head. A Cobb grand jury has not indicted a police officer involved in a fatal shooting in at least 25 years. There have been five fatal police shootings in Cobb this year."
Surafel's family have not received any answers from Cobb County Police Department to their questions regarding the shooting death of Surafel Assaminew and have now retained a lawyer in defense of Surafel's civil rights.
