The man who died after a car crash involving a Minneapolis police squad car Tuesday was identified as the uncle of Darnella Frazier, the teenager who filmed the murder of George Floyd.
Police spokesman John Elder said officers were chasing a robbery suspect early Tuesday when a squad car collided with a vehicle at an intersection. The driver of the vehicle died after being taken to a hospital, Elder said.
In a Facebook post, Frazier identified the man who was killed as her uncle Leneal Lamont Frazier.
“Minneapolis police has cost my whole family a big loss,” she wrote. “You took an innocent life trying to catch someone else.”
Leneal Frazier’s sister, Cheryl, confirmed to WCCO-TV the father of five was killed in the crash.
Elder said police spotted a driver in a vehicle believed to have been stolen during a carjacking and linked to multiple robberies and attempted to make a traffic stop early Tuesday. The driver left the scene, and an officer in pursuit collided with another vehicle around 12:30 a.m.
The driver of the police car was treated at the hospital and released.
A third vehicle was involved in the wreck, Elder said. The suspect, who was not apprehended, was not involved in the crash. The Minnesota State Patrol is investigating the pursuit, and the Minneapolis police department will conduct an internal investigation.
Darnella Frazier, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation last month, questioned why police were involved in a high-speed chase on a residential road. Law enforcement officials have long considered police pursuits one of the most dangerous kinds of police activity.
The department updated its pursuit policy in 2019 to prohibit officers from chasing people suspected of committing nonviolent and lesser offenses, according to the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. Officers must end a pursuit if it “poses an unreasonable risk to the officers, the public or passengers of the vehicle being pursued who may be unwilling participants,” the outlet reported.
More than 5,000 bystanders and passengers were killed and tens of thousands more were injured in police car chases since 1979, a USA TODAY analysis found in 2015. Black people – both innocent bystanders and those fleeing the police – have been killed in police chases at a rate nearly three times higher than everyone else.
Contributing: Thomas Frank
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Darnella Frazier’s uncle killed in crash with Minneapolis police car