The family of the man whose death at the hands of cops in Baton Rouge earlier this month sparked a new wave of protests on Sunday called for peace on Sunday in the wake of the fatal shooting of three officers in the Louisiana city.
Alton Sterling's aunt, Veda Washington-Abusaleh, made an emotional call for peacein the wake of the attack on police officers in Baton Rouge.
"We are peaceful people," she told a local news station, pleading for nonviolence and decrying "senseless murder."
The fatal shooting of her nephew on July 5 — and a video of the incident that quickly went viral — sparked protests in Baton Rouge and throughout the nation. The anger of those protests was reinforced when Philando Castile was killed by police in Minnesota just a day later, also on video.
"We don't call for no bloodshed," Washington-Abusaleh said. "That's how this all started."
She then said that she knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of a phone call that announced the death of a family member.
"At the end of the day when these people call these families and they tell them that their daddies and their mamas not coming home no more, I know how they feel because I got the same phone call... stop this killing."