A peaceful vigil for a troubled Georgia Tech student turned violent on Monday night.
Several hundred students and alumni gathered to attend a vigil for Scout Schultz on the Tech campus in downtown Atlanta at 8 p.m. Monday.
Schultz, 21, was shot and killed by a campus police officer late Saturday after repeated warnings to drop a small knife he was carrying.
THe 4th year engineering student was president of the Gay Pride Alliance at Georgia Tech. The vigil was organized by the Gay Pride Alliance.
About 50 students broke away from the vigil and began marching toward the campus police station, shouting anti-police slogans.
“I was marching with them until they got in front of the police station and then all hell broke loose,” Chad Miller, a Tech alumnus, told the AJC.
Three people were arrested and charged with inciting a riot and battery of an officer, according to the AJC.
2 police officers were injured during the skirmish. The 2 officers were treated at Grady Memorial Hospital and discharged, a Tech spokeswoman told the AJC.com.
Mingling among the students were members of Antifa. Rumors are swirling that more Antifa thugs are being bused to Atlanta today to confront police on the Georgia Tech campus.
Around 9:30 p.m., Ga Tech sent a tweet advising students to shelter in place. “Stay inside due to violent protests on campus,” Georgia Tech officials tweeted.
Schultz, who was born a male, suffered from the mental disorder Gender Dysphoria. He identified as bisexual, non-binary and intersex and referred to himself in the third person as “them”, “their” and “they,” according to his mother Lynne.
3 suicide notes were found in Schultz’s dorm room after he called police to report “a person with a knife and a gun.”
Cell phone video shows Schultz advancing slowly on the officers and shouting “Shoot me!”
The officers warned him to drop his knife before a shot rang out and he fell to the ground, screaming in pain.
Schultz’s parents say the officers should have used non-lethal force to subdue their son.
They hired an attorney who held a news briefing on Monday. Attorney L Chris Stewart said Schultz was armed with a small box cutter with the blade retracted. He asked whether officers received training on dealing with mentally ill students
The family released a statement on Monday night calling for calm.
“We ask that those who wish to protest Scout’s death do so peacefully. Answering violence with violence is not the answer. Our goal is to work diligently to make positive change at Georgia Tech in an effort to ensure a safer campus for all students,” the statement said.
