Family Holds Funeral for Alfred Olango

Alfred Olango, 38, was shot and killed by officers with the El Cajon Police Department on Sept. 27

Family members gathered Saturday for the funeral of Alfred Olango, the unarmed black man shot and killed last month by police officers in El Cajon.

“Alfred’s death is going to be a changing point for the United States,” his father, Richard Olango, said Saturday. “It’s more than it looks. This has shaken the whole world."

The funeral, open to the public, began at 11 a.m. at Bayview Baptist Church on Benson Avenue in San Diego. The burial of Olango followed; he was laid to rest at Greenwood Cemetery on Imperial Avenue.

After the burial, the San Diego chapter of the National Action Network (NAN) held a public “celebration of life” for Olango at the East African Community Center on Fairmount Avenue. San Diego NAN leader Rev. Shane Harris, and other civil rights activists, were there, as well as Olango’s family members.

Olango, a 38-year-old refugee who came to the U.S. from Uganda in 1991, was shot and killed on Sept. 27 during an encounter with El Cajon Police Department (ECPD) officers Richard Gonsalves and Josh McDaniel in the parking lot of a shopping center in the 800 block of Broadway in El Cajon.

Police said Olango was acting “erratically” and refused to comply with the officers’ orders. The officers told him to get his hands out of the pockets of his pants. Instead, the ECPD said Olango pulled a 4-inch vaping device from his pocket and pointed it at Gonsalves and McDaniel in what police described as a “shooting stance.”

McDaniel deployed a Taser at Olango; Gonsalves fired multiple rounds from his gun, critically striking Olango.

The police shooting of Olango sparked days of protests on the streets of El Cajon, some of those demonstrations peaceful, some violent.

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