Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

As with Ferguson, Missouri, Black Lives Matter community leaders in Louisville are turning up dead in the wake of revelations that state AG Daniel Cameron never even considered murder or even manslaughter charges against Louisville Metro Police in the death of Breonna Taylor.

Hours after protest leader Travis Nagdy was shot and killed in late November, Kris Smith remembered the young man fondly.

“He’s gonna be missed over here, because he was really one of the good ones,” Smith told The Courier Journal at the time.

Today, those who knew Smith have found themselves saying similar things about the 42-year-old business owner who was a regular at protests over the death of Breonna Taylor.

On Friday, Smith was shot and killed in the 200 block of North 26th Street, according to a chaplain who helped identify his body.

His death is one of more than 150 homicides in Louisville this year, a number that has blown past the city's previous record of 117 homicides in 2016.

Neither Louisville police nor the coroner's office have confirmed Smith as the victim. But Stachelle Bussey, a local pastor and friend of Smith's, said she was with Smith's wife when she identified his body at University of Louisville Hospital.

"Just like everybody else, he was finding his niche, finding his voice" at the protests, Bussey said. "We're mourning one, then we lose another. ... With Travis, I lost a brother. Today we lost another one."

 

Here's the best part.

 

Police say there is no evidence to indicate that Nagdy and Smith's deaths are related, and there are "no motives at this point." 

Of course not. Perish the thought. And I'm sure LMPD will have these murders solved any day now.

Any day now.

Black lives still matter.