On Friday afternoon, family and community members gathered in Houston to demand accountability after Jalen Randle, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by police two days earlier.
According to police accounts, Randle was shot dead by officer S. Privette, whose first initial and last name match those of a cop who was charged in a highly-publicized—and later dismissed—case of alleged police brutality in 2017.
Randle’s mother, Tiffany Rachal, of Cypress, Texas, told The Daily Beast that what she wants most now is to see her son—who was still at the coroner’s office—and justice done for the officer that killed him.
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“Was he perfect? No. But he didn’t deserve to be killed,” Rachal told The Daily Beast.
“I just want to see my child so I can hug him and tell him I love him so he can go and be at peace,” she added.
According to a police press release, Randle was in a vehicle that fled a narcotics team allegedly “searching for the suspect,” who they said had three open warrants. The release suggested Randle and the other person in the vehicle fled until the police were able to stop the car by blocking its path.
When Randle exited the vehicle, Privette shot and killed him, police say. Randle had no weapon in his hands, though the release claims that a gun was later found inside a bag he was holding at the time of the shooting.
Houston police would not immediately comment further on the specifics of Randle’s death. Officer Shane Privette was charged in 2019 with aggravated assault by a public servant over a 2017 incident that left a man with a busted eye socket and bruises, according to a Houston Chronicle report at the time. A grand jury later dismissed the charges, and his attorney told the paper, “We always felt that Shane had done absolutely nothing wrong.”
Attempts to contact Privette on Friday were not immediately successful.
Two days after her son died, Rachal broke down in sobs as she held his portrait at a press conference in Houston. There, near the site of the shooting, she was embraced by those surrounding her.
In an interview, Rachal described her son as “loving,” a man who had a “heart of gold,” who cared about the elderly, his friends and his family deeply, and left behind a 5-year-old daughter, Jaylee.
“At the end of the day, he was a[n] awesome child. Every day he called me. Every day, I called him,” she said.
“‘Mama, I love you,’” he would always say, she said.
The group assembled Friday demanded the release of body-camera footage of the moments leading up to Randle’s death. This must be released by the department within 30 days if the event in question takes place on public property, according to Houston police.
