Chinedu Valentine Okobi with her daughter in 2010(Photo: The family of Chinedu Valentine Okobi)

SAN FRANCISCO – Two weeks ago, Chinedu Valentine Okobi, who was driving on a busy street in downtown Millbrae, California, was arrested after being attacked by San Mateo County Sheriff's deputies.

The drama unfolding about the death in custody of this 36-year-old father and graduate of Morehouse College, who may have suffered from a mental breakdown, is similar to other very difficult cases. mediatized unarmed black men who have seized the nation in recent years.

Ebele Okobi, Chinedu's sister, asks for an investigation into the police tactics used to control her brother during the fatal encounter. Have sheriff MPs been trained in crisis intervention for people with mental illness? Why did MPs continue to zap Okobi with the Tasers rather than seeking medical help?

What's different this time, Okobi is a prominent leader on Facebook and her grief over the death of her brother strikes near home for employees of the tech giant, where many leaders, including the director of Facebook's operation, Sheryl Sandberg, showed their support.

Okobi, 44, says she wants her younger brother's death, a few miles from his company's headquarters in Silicon Valley, to reverberate in this place where privileges and races keep many people away from everyday life and black experiences.

"There is a part of me that is angry that this is the reality of all black people I know and that people can live completely unaware of this reality," she told USA TODAY.

What happened to the brother of Okobi is still unclear. At least five deputies were involved. The sheriff's department said that when Chinedu Valentine Okobi was contacted for the first time, he "immediately assaulted" a deputy. According to San Mateo County Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, whose office investigates the death of Okobi, at least two deputies fired with their stun gun, which gave four shots in total. Okobi family lawyer John Burris, who represented the families of Mario Woods, Oscar Grant and Rodney King in a civil lawsuit against the police, said one passer-by saw Okobi sitting on the floor on Sunday. chin on chest, seeming unconscious with foam. around his mouth, while being propped up by the knee of one of the deputies.

Despite public scrutiny and national protests against the death of unarmed black men in custody, Ebele Okobi claims to know the statistics: very few agents are criminally charged and even when 39, a case is pursued, they are rarely convicted. This only made him more determined to draw attention to law enforcement practices, not just for his brother, but to prevent this pain from being visited by D & D. Other families, she said.

At the same time, she wants to educate people who have never been personally touched by the death of blacks, as many of his own Facebook colleagues who, since the death of his brother, have confided to Okobi: " I did not think it could happen to someone I know. "

"I think this has helped people who are not African American and who are not part of the African-American community to recognize that every black person is facing a problem," said TODAY USA, Okobi, director of Facebook's public policies for Africa. "I really think that on Facebook, for many of my friends and colleagues, there has been this awareness and recognition that this is an important national problem. "

In the city where Okobi's brother was killed, less than one percent of the population is African-American. Four percent of employees are African-Americans on Facebook, which, like other major technology companies in Silicon Valley, is primarily composed of whites and men and the sensitivity to Black Lives Matter movement has not always been obvious. In 2016, Facebook employees striped "Black Lives Matter" and writes "All Lives Matter" on the walls of the Menlo Park, California campus of the company. Facebook investigated the racist incident and CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the movement's slogan as "deeply offensive".

It was this kind of racial attitude in the United States that drove Okobi to uproot his family and move to London four years ago, after the birth of his son.

At the hospital, a nurse said, "Oh, he has such big hands, he's a big boy, he's going to be a football player."

"I remember that moment thinking, first of all, that he can not be a pianist? He can not play the violin? He can not be a surgeon? It's just that, at that time, there was already a story told my son was tall and intimidating, he was only six pounds and nine years old and he was only three days old. "

Okobi says she's leaving the US "to never have to make that phone call about my son." Receiving this phone call about my brother was both shocking and inevitable because I was running away. "

More: Facebook's efforts for diversity fail African-American and Hispanic women

More: The industry's diversity efforts for diversity have not kept its promises. A new report explains why.

More: Here's why women, blacks and Hispanics leave technology

According to a 2016 study by the Center for Policing Equity, African Americans are much more likely than whites and other groups to be subject to force by the police. And this use of force can be deadly. Michael Brown in Ferguson. Tamir Rice in Cleveland. Walter Scott in South Carolina. Alton Sterling at Baton Rouge. Philando Castile in Minnesota. Stephon Clark in Sacramento.

And there are other examples of black men who suffer from mental illness and who die in custody. Terrence Coleman, a Bostonian with schizophrenia, was killed in 2016 after his mother called an ambulance to take her to the hospital. The family of a mentally ill man in Milwaukee, who had received many prescriptions before his death, filed a federal civil rights complaint in May.

Studies show that stun guns, used by agents as an alternative to lethal force, can cause death or contribute to one's death. According to a Reuters survey published in 2017, more than 1,000 people in the United States have died after being stunned by the Tasers, most of them since 2000. Earlier this year, police officers Milwaukee filmed with a camera the body of the NBA, Sterling Brown led to discipline for officers and an apology from the Mayor of Milwaukee. And Burris says Okobi is the third person this year to die in San Mateo County after being transferred.

Chinedu Valentine Okobi, who died as a result of fighting with police in the San Francisco Bay Area on October 3rd. (Photo: photo provided by the family of Chinedu Valentine Okobi)

Okobi, who was not suspected of any crime and had no outstanding warrants, was the youngest of the five siblings who grew up in the Diamond Heights district of San Francisco. He has a degree in Business Administration from Morehouse and dreams of "conquering the world," says his sister.

He then began to struggle with mental health problems and, while studying for the GMAT, he began to hear voices. A psychiatrist diagnosed him with bipolar, another schizophrenic.

His ambitions were derailed, he has always maintained a stable job, regularly attended the church, wrote poetry and had a child. He was cared for until December or January, when his sister was afraid to stop taking her meds.

Ebele Okobi says she knew something was wrong when she came home for Christmas and that her brother, who loved his three children, did not participate in the family party. He lost his job at Home Depot in January. "He certainly was not himself," she says.

Okobi was in contact and disconnected from his family. A week before his death, he texted his mother: "Hello, sun." The day before, he had sent child support to his 12-year-old daughter who lives in Nashville with his mother.

A video on a mobile phone posted on Snapchat from October 3 shows that Okobi wandered around El Camino Real, a busy artery, in the middle of the day, Burris said. A few minutes later, the surveillance video of a hotel shows deputies arriving at the scene. After a fight, Okobi was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.

On Tuesday, a service was organized for Okobi at the San Francisco Christian Center. Ime Archibong, Facebook Vice President of Partnerships, Maxine Williams, Global Diversity Officer, and Joel Kaplan, Vice President of Policy, attended the ceremony. Friends and colleagues at Ebele Okobi paid more than $ 40,000 to a Facebook fundraiser on his behalf to benefit Bryan Stevenson's Equality of Justice Initiative.

Okobi says she wants her brother to be better known than the hashtag.

"Her name is now one of too many names," she wrote. "He was a person, he was my little brother, he was a father, he was loved, now he is gone and our hearts are broken, black life counts."

Read or share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/10/16/police-death-black-man-hits-home-facebook-silicon-valley/1661688002/