![]() ![]() At 10.36pm, Taco Bell employees called 911 reporting a man “slumped over” in the driver’s seat at their drive-through. But the department eventually began pushing out its official narrative through the local media. The family said police never contacted them. “The way they was nonchalant, the way they spoke to my family after what we knew they had just done, it tore me up.” “They left him out there like an animal carcass … like a dog that got run over by a car,” said David Harrison, Willie’s 48-year-old cousin, who helped raise Willie and also rushed to the scene that night. ![]() “They told us to leave the area,” Marc recalled one evening a few days after the killing. He rushed to the scene on the night of the shooting. Why was he killed? Nothing.ĭavid Harrison, a cousin who helped raise Willie. Officers were immediately hostile and rebuffed each of the questions asked by Willie’s brothers and cousins who made it to Taco Bell. They soon learned it was police who had killed him. When they arrived, Willie was lifeless on the ground, surrounded by officers, who had set up a wide perimeter blocking access to the crime scene. They spent the final 15 minutes driving in a state of shock. A cousin who had called didn’t have much information, and Marc and other relatives initially thought Willie may have been caught up in street violence or that police had identified the wrong person.īefore they arrived from Oakland, they got the news that it was Willie, and he was gone. Marc McCoy, Willie’s 50-year-old brother, rushed to Vallejo, an East Bay city about 30 miles from San Francisco. The call came around midnight on Saturday 9 February: Willie had been shot in a parking lot. And those who viewed him after the killing said they were unable to escape the image of his face and body – completely unrecognizable and riddled with bullet holes. While trying to remember him as he lived, some said they were haunted by thoughts of how he died. Willie’s friends and family described him as energetic and deeply loyal, a young man who was dedicated to building a career and life around music, who seemed so close to breaking through. When Willie was in your presence, you was honored to be around him,” added BooBooMane. “I just start crying.”įriends and collaborators of Willie McCoy at a music studio in Oakland, California. ![]() Some songs, he said, were too painful to hear. “It hits us different every day,” said Levonte Cole, a 26-year-old cousin and artist known as Pay Me, who said he scrolls through his phone and pauses at Willie’s number, wishing he could call. “He was a targeted person … The music was about the hardships he overcame.” “Police always harassing him, and he always overcoming that,” said Damariee Cole, Willie’s 28-year-old nephew, whose artist name is BooBooMane. “Last time they pulled me over, they ain’t get shit!” two of them recited in unison, playing a recording on one of their iPhones of a recent Willie lyric. On a recent afternoon, his longtime music collaborators, which included numerous relatives, gathered in a small music studio in east Oakland, and for the first time since Willie’s killing, listened to some of his music. The brutal killing has also shaken the Bay Area rap community where the artist known as Willie Bo was rising in prominence with his group FBG, which stands for “Forever Black Gods”. Willie’s loved ones, who filed a wrongful death claim on Thursday before a Friday memorial service, have called it an “ execution by a firing squad”, and the death has sparked outrage across the globe. 01:59 Friends speak out about the police killing of Willie McCoy – video ![]()
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