Kyler Grabbingbear, Lakota Sioux Youth, Killed In Adams County Colorado For Running Away From A Deputy Sheriff.

Kyler Grabbingbear

Kyler Grabbingbear, a 19-year-old Lakota Sioux who had dreams of being a surgeon is dead. He was shot by an unnamed Adams County Deputy Sheriff from whom he had fled and later gotten into a scuffle. Until now, the Adams’ County Sheriff’s Department has refused to identify the name of the deputy. The deputy sheriff was on another call – having nothing to do with Grabbingbear – when the latter saw the sheriff and took off running, believing that the authorities were after him for an unrelated minor driving infraction.

This evening (December 11, 2017) a memorial protest was held at the Adams County Sheriff’s Department in Brighton. I went to pay my respects and express my sympathy with the family. There were fifty-sixty people there, including Grabbingbear’s mother and father. Also there was Lynn Eagle Feather, whose son, Paul Castaway was shot and killed by Denver Police two years ago. The parents were in shock but spoke with dignity, doing their best to control their grief. The crowd was made up mostly of youth – of course I couldn’t tell exactly but most of the youth there seemed to be in their late teens and early twenties, some were Indians, others Anglo, virtually all in tears. A number of Indian adults were present as well. It was all dignified, profoundly sad.

And so now, once again, the calls for an investigation, for justice begins for yet another young man cut down in the prime of his life, from all appearances, killed because he ran away from poorly or inadequately trained “officer of the law.” According to the Washington Post, 1000 people a year are killed by police officers nationally; of those nearly half are non-white youth.

At the Protest-Memorial for Kyler Grabbingbear in front of the Adams County Sheriff’s Office