In the early hours of November 2, Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old black woman from Detroit, was in a car accident in the largely white city of Dearborn Heights. When she sought help by knocking on someone’s door, she was shot in the face and killed.
As McBride’s family grapples with her death and searches for answers, the man who killed her has yet to be charged with any crime. He has said both that he felt threatened and that the gun went off accidentally, and it’s possible, in a case reminiscent of the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, that he will invoke Michigan’s version of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. The law, called the “Self-Defense Act,” could protect him from criminal prosecution if he believed that he was in danger, however wrongheaded or rooted in racial bias that belief may have been.
TO DO TO READAs The Nation’s Mychal Denzel Smith points out, “We have been here before.”
TO WATCHIn her powerful video, dream hampton highlights the calls for justice in the wake of Renisha McBride’s death.
