The mother of Alton Sterling’s oldest child offered compassionate remarks about police on Friday
Quinyetta McMillon told CBS News that her son, 15-year-old Cameron Sterling, is not afraid of the cops despite seeing the graphic footage of two Baton Rouge, Louisiana, officers pinning his father to the ground and then fatally shooting him on Tuesday.
“No, he’s not afraid of police, because they still have a lot of good police out here,” McMillon said. “Everybody’s not bad.”
The sight of the teenage boy weeping besides his mother as McMillon spoke at a Wednesday press conference generated an outpouring of sympathy.
“He’s trying to get back to his regular, 15-year-old life,” McMillon said. But she added, “He misses his father.”
Alton Sterling, 37, was shot in a convenience store parking lot where he’d been selling CDs. Police said they had received a report of a man with a gun threatening another man. Mobile phone video appears to show that Sterling wasn’t holding a weapon during the confrontation with police.
McMillon didn’t want Cameron to see the video, but she couldn’t shield him from it. “It was everywhere,” she said.
Sterling planned to use the money he made from selling CDs to take his children to the movies and for a meal, according to McMillon.
CBS’s David Begnaud repeatedly pressed McMillon on whom she blames for Sterling’s death and specifically asked what she thought of police.
“I blame those two officers, not all police,” she said. “Those two officers is who I blame for the death of my son’s father.”
The interview occurred the morning after five officers were killed and seven more were injured possibly by a single gunman amidst a peaceful protest in Dallas over the police shootings of Sterling and Philando Castile.
McMillon sympathized with the families of the slain officers.
“The hurt of those families, the pain that I know they feel because I’m going through it. It hurts,” she said. “It’s just a bad situation and it’s not right.”
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