The family of a 20-year-old man from Dublin is trying to establish the brutal circumstances surrounding his death in the USA on Monday.
Andrew Hanlon was shot dead by a local part-time police officer in the small town of Silverton in the northwestern US state of Oregon.
Speaking this morning on RTÉ Radio 1, Mr. Hanlon's sister Melanie Heise, who lives in Silverton, said the circumstances surrounding her brother's death were the subject of much hearsay.
Police told the family on Tuesday that Andrew had been shot dead, but they had not contacted the family again since then.
Ms. Heise said there was a lot of anger about the death in the town, which has not had a shooting for twenty years. She said that local residents had held a protest.
They were appalled and wanted to know why such excessive force was used against her brother.
This afternoon the popular Liveline programme on RTÉ Radio 1 was entirely given to the case. Dorothea Hanlon, Andrews mother, appealed for help and received one of the most emotional outpourings of Irish solidarity ever heard on the airwaves.
She is now preparing to travel to Oregon, to find out what exactly happened there to her son.
Sadly the USA are a violent country, and shootings happen there every day. It also happens in regular intervals that US policemen make more than excessive use of their firearms. Mostly the victims of their irresponsible actions are poor black people. But this time it is a young Irishman, who had only moved to the USA a few months ago.
Personally I would never set foot on US soil again, and I can only suggest to others to follow my example. There is enough violence in Ireland, but at least our police force, the Garda Siochana, does not gun down young men as they please.
The Emerald Islander
