CLEVELAND — The father of a man who was shot and killed by police last month wants answers, and he says Cleveland police aren’t providing them.
On April 9, an off-duty police officer opened fire on on a maroon sedan in the middle of the day, near West 25th Street and Pearl Road.
Desmond Franklin, 22, was killed, and a 17-year-old who was also inside the car was injured by broken glass.
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Now Desmond’s father and his lawyer want to know what led up to the shooting.
“It rips me apart,” Emmanuel Franklin said. “This young man lost his life driving down the street.”
Police have been limited in what they’ve said about the shooting, only that off-duty officer, Jose Garcia, who was not wearing a badge or driving a police cruiser, was investigating “criminal activity” in the area and said he saw a weapon inside the car.
It’s still unclear if a gun was found.
“We want answers,” Franklin said. “And we’ve gotten no response.”
Now the Franklin family is launching its own investigation, pulling surveillance video from the neighborhood and trying to figure out what happened the day a shooting left four kids without a father.
“The 5-year-old [said], ‘Papa, is my daddy coming back?’” Franklin said. “And it brings tears to my eyes.”
Cleveland police say Garcia is on restricted duty as the internal investigation continues.
“You can’t jog down the street, you can’t sleep in your home, and now in Cleveland, you can’t drive down the street in your own neighborhood,” Franklin said.
