Tyler Perry to Pay for Rayshard Brooks’ Funeral

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 23: Tyler Perry attends the 2019 BET Awards at Microsoft Th
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Alana Mastrangelo

Hollywood mogul and actor Tyler Perry will be paying for the funeral for Rayshard Brooks — who was killed during a violent confrontation with police on Friday evening in Atlanta, Ga., — according to an attorney for the Brooks family.

“We do want to acknowledge and thank Tyler Perry, who we spoke with [and] who will be taking care of the funeral for the family,” announced attorney L. Chris Stewart at a press conference on Monday. “It’s support like that, and it’s people who are actually in this community, that love the community, that want healing, and [want] families like this to never have to go through something like this.”

“It’s a step forward, ” the attorney said. “And we want to thank him for such a generous move.”

Brooks was fatally shot in a confrontation with police on Friday in Atlanta, Georgia, at a Wendy’s after purportedly resisting arrest and stealing an officer’s taser.

Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms later announced that police chief Erika Shields was resigning over the incident. Moreover, Garrett Rolfe, the officer who fatally shot Brooks, was fired. Nonetheless, protests ensued in the city over Brooks’ death, and rioters ended up setting fire to the Wendy’s where the incident occurred.

CNN was also present to film what it called “protests,” but decided to leave the premises once rioters became “very angry that we were recording this, and tried to block our cameras — and at that point they got aggressive, and our CNN camera was broken,” according to CNN’s Natasha Chen.

Brooks’ death arrives just three weeks after the death of George Floyd, and appears to have sparked another wave of protests and riots.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

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