Outrage over the fatal shooting in Fresno, Ca., of Dylan Noble, a white teenager, prompted supporters at a vigil to brandish Confederate flags and shout “white lives matter,” and pushed many of them out to the streets this month, reports the Los Angeles Times. “We’re as outraged about what happened with Dylan as about what happened to Philando [Castile] and Alton [Sterling},” said Ernesto Saavedra, the son of Mexican immigrants, alluding to cases in Minnesota and Louisiana in which blacks died. “He’s white and he died in the streets the same way a lot of brown and black people have.” Noble, a 19-year-old “country boy,” was unarmed when he was shot and killed following a traffic stop.
The shooting gained national media attention and a quick response from officials. Police Chief Jerry Dyer, who said Noble had refused officers’ orders, called the death a tragedy and asked the FBI to investigate. Noble is seen ignoring officers’ commands to get on the ground. He holds something in his hand — which turned out to be a 4-inch plastic container with malleable clay — and at one point, he walks toward the officers, saying “I [expletive] hate my life.” Officers shot him twice while he was standing and twice as he lay injured on the ground. An analysis by the Washington Post showed that while police in the U.S. fatally shoot whites more frequently than blacks, blacks are 2.5 times as likely as whites to be fatally shot by police.