Obituaries

[gabrielle]

Edward Crawford, protester from iconic Ferguson photo, dead from self-inflicted gunshot in St. Louis

Quote:Crawford would become a nationally recognized symbol of the unrest in Ferguson when, dressed in an American flag tank top and clutching a bag of potato chips, he picked up a tear-gas canister and tossed it back toward riot gear-clad officers. The scene was captured by the lens of St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer Robert Cohen and was part of the package that earned the paper a Pulitzer Prize for their photography of the unrest.

Crawford Jr., 27, died Thursday night after what police say was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, leaving behind four children.

According to police, Crawford was riding in the backseat of a vehicle that evening when he began telling the two other occupants that he was depressed.

“The victim began expressing he was distraught over personal matters to the witnesses,” Leah Freeman, a spokeswoman for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police, said in a statement. “The witnesses heard the victim rummaging in the backseat, then heard a gunshot and observed the victim had sustained a gunshot wound to the head...”

...His death comes eight months after the murder of Darren Seals, a prominent Ferguson activist who was found shot dead in a burning car last September, prompting some to question whether Crawford’s death was truly a suicide. St. Louis County PD said Friday that the investigation into Seals’s death remains active. (Another man, Deandre Joshua was found shot to death in a burning car in Ferguson on the night of the grand jury decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson)...

...Enshrined in the minds of many as a symbol of defiant protest — which he said in interviews had brought attention to issues of police impunity and brutality that had long been overlooked — Crawford always expressed skepticism about whether real, sustained change would ever come to the people of Ferguson.

“You’re gonna write your story, and you’re gonna leave town, and nothing is going to change,” he told this reporter in August 2014. “One day, one month, one year from now, after you leave, it’s still going to be f–ked up in Ferguson.”