Oscar Grant Remembered At Fruitvale Station Vigil, 10 Years After Shooting Death
The family of Oscar Grant is still pushing to have Fruitvale Station, where the 22-year-old was fatally shot by a BART officer, renamed in his memory.
Aidge Patterson of the LA Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant leads a protest rally outside a pretrial hearing for Johannes Mehserle, the former Bay Area Rapid Transit officer charged with murder in the shooting death of Grant in Oakland, California last year, at the Criminal Courts Building in Los Angeles on March 26, 2010. Grant, 22, was shot dead by Mehserle who responded to reports of fighting on the subway. The shooting was captured on video and has been widely broadcast on television and on the Internet. AFP PHOTO/Mark RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)
New Year’s Day, Tuesday, marked the 10-year anniversary of Oscar Grant’s shooting death at the hands of a BART police officer at Fruitvale Station in Oakland, California.
But Grant is long from forgotten as family and supporters, including a crowd of 200, gathered at Fruitvale Station for a four-hour ceremony of prayers, speeches and poetry to memorialize the 22-year-old’s death, the SF Chronicle reports.
During the vigil, Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson, acknowledged that her son’s shooting has “caused us not to just accept when a person is killed but to really examine what took place.”
Grant’s shooting death did rock the community and the nation alike, particularly as bystanders captured the horrific footage on their cell phones and posted it online, prompting the shooting to go viral.
BART Board Director Lateefah Simon also noted at the vigil that Grant’s death pushed her to run for office.
“When Oscar died, I knew, like thousands of people in this city and millions in the world, that we needed to change structures,” she told attendees. “So I ran for the BART board, and you all elected me.”
“It would be an atonement, it would be part of BART saying yes this happened here, we vow that it won’t happen again and we vow to work with the communities and ensure that all people are treated equally,” Grant’s mother said at the time.
However, despite the family’s request, BART sidestepped, saying that its policy prohibits it from naming stations after individuals and that names have to be tied to the location. The agency said at the time that they had commissioned a mural in Grant’s honor to go up on the wall of the station instead.
However, at the vigil, Grant’s mother doubled down on her request for the station to be renamed.
“Fruitvale Grant Station — we’re claiming that,” she said. “We believe that, and we will fight.”
