LeBron James: wrote a tweet about the girl’s murder in Ohio and had to delete it

The power of elite athletes over public opinion is immense. The huge reach that their image gives them, mainly through social media, can be more useful than any campaign. In the last hours, James lebron He has witnessed what his words can cause, for better and for worse. The leader of the Lakers tweeted and then deleted a post about Ma’Khia Bryant’s murder at the hands of a police officer, in Franklin County, Columbus, Ohio. And he made it clear that he did it because it was being used to “create more hate.”

Bryant, a 16-year-old girl, was shot dead while responding to an emergency call for attempted stabbing. The crime occurred shortly before a Minneapolis jury announced the guilty verdict of former cop Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd, the case that gave the Black Lives movement the most great momentum.

Tuesday night LeBron James uploaded a photo of the cop who killed Bryant and wrote: “YOU’R NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY”. The sentence, accompanied by an hourglass, was clearly intended to show that the “neighbor” should be punished, just as happened with the police involved in the Floyd case.

Senator Tom Cotton has spoken publicly about the message: “LeBron James incites violence against an Ohio police officer. It is embarrassing and dangerous. Extremely reckless. Does the NBA agree with that? What about Twitter? “, He said. It also caused massive backlash in American conservative circles.

The next day the player deleted the tweet and wrote another one that read: “Anger doesn’t do any of us any good, and that includes me. My anger is still there for what happened to this girl. My sympathy for his family and that justice prevails ”.

And continued: “I am very tired of seeing black people killed by the police. It’s not about a single agent, but the whole system, and they always use our words to create more racism. I desperately need more RESPONSIBILITY ”.

Body camera footage of the officer in the shootout in which Bryant was killed has been made public. There, the young girl appears to have a knife in her hand before the officer shoots her four times.

The county in which Bryant was killed hasIt is one of the highest rates of fatal police shootings in the United States.

THE NATION