After a night of Camden Yards mayhem, a Baltimore pastor made it clear that “somebody is going to have to pay” for the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered from a severe spinal injury while in police custody.
The words of warning came Sunday from Pastor Jamal Bryant, who told a primarily black audience including Gray’s friends and family at Baltimore’s Empowerment Temple that if “you’re black in America , your life is always under threat.”
His sermon kicked off a day of mourning for Gray’s loved ones and supporters, who filed through the Vaughn Green East Funeral Home for several hours Sunday to pay their respects. Gray, laid out in an open casket, was pictured wearing a L.A. Dodgers baseball hat and white shirt.
As members of Gray’s family said goodbye, another wave of supporters had their own messages of condolence for Gray’s loved ones.
Across the street from Freddie Gray’s wake, a group of supporters wave to passing traffic and hold signs in support of the 25-year-old man.
“We remember Freddie” and “Our hearts are with the Gray family,” some signs read.
Gray’s funeral scheduled for Monday will herald a visit by White House staffer Broderick Johnson, a Baltimore native who heads the Obama administration’s taskforce My Brother’s Keeper, a government initiative to help young minority men find employment and education.
Johnson also attended Michael Brown’s funeral in Ferguson, Mo., on behalf of President Obama.
The tearful wake comes two weeks after police chased down the 25-year-old victim of alleged brutality and shackled him into the back of a police van. He died one week ago when the family’s attorney revealed he had a severed spine.
It’s not yet clear how Gray suffered the spinal cord injury, but cell phone video taken during his arrest shows the young man screaming in pain.
"We do know that he was hollering out for aid. He was not given aid after being arrested,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, who represents Baltimore’s 7th District, said on Sunday’s “Face the Nation. “A lot of people are very, very frustrated as to trying to figure out what happened here, and it's very upsetting.”
During Bryant's morning speech, the pastor condemned the overnight violencethat resulted in 34 arrests during Saturday’s round of protests that dragged on past midnight.
The violence apparently came from both sides however, after a video that surfaced Sunday showed Baltimore cops beating a photo editor for the Baltimore City Paper.
At least two police officers tackled J.M. Giordano to the ground, sending the paper’s managing editor in a frenzy, yelling "he's a photographer, he's press" to stop his arrest. The take down happened just after midnight when members of the crowd began throwing rocks. Giordano was standing next to a protester.
A demonstrator puts on a Baltimore City Police hat taken from a destroyed police car while protesting the death Freddie Gray.
“They just swarmed over me,” Giordano told his newspaper. “I got hit. My head hit the ground. They were hitting me, then someone pulled me out.”
He got back up and kept shooting photos of the demonstration's final stretch after it began in the afternoon, collecting at least 1,200 people in Camden Yards at its peak, fire officials said.
Police arrested and cited Reuters photographer Sait Serkan Gurbuz on charges of failure to obey orders.
Nightfall led to banged up police cruisers, looted corner stores, smashed storefront windows and six wounded police officers who were pelted with tossed rocks, according to Baltimore Police Department, whose top lawmen blamed out-of-towners for the brunt of the damage.
