This is a current-day Emmett Till.
Barry Washington Jr. complimented a white woman at the bar but didn’t know she had a boyfriend. After she told him that, he went about his business. Her racist boyfriend, Ian MacKenzie Cranston, though couldn’t let it go and initiated a fight which he lost.
Because he lost the fight, he shot and killed Washington Jr.
He would have gotten off with a slap on the wrist if it weren’t for public outrage.
A Central Oregon man is being charged with murder over the death of 22-year-old Barry Washington Jr, who was shot outside a nightclub in Bend on Sept. 19.
Police arrested Ian MacKenzie Cranston at his home in Redmond on Thursday evening, soon after a Deschutes County grand jury returned an indictment on six charges: second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, second-degree manslaughter, first-degree assault, and two counts of unlawful use of a deadly weapon.
Washington, a Black man, was unarmed at the time of his death. Cranston, the accused shooter, is white.
Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel told OPB the evidence suggests the men did not know each other until the night of the shooting, when Washington approached Cranston’s girlfriend, Allison Butler.
Initially, Cranston was charged with second-degree manslaughter, posted bail, and was out on the streets immediately.
Thankfully those charges have been upgraded, but you still have to wonder if Cranston will get off eventually.
Many things have changed from 1921 to 2021, but there is still danger in speaking to white women if you are a black man. You can still be shot dead in the street, and a cover will immediately take place. It doesn’t matter the state it can be any state in America these days, so don’t think you are safe because you aren’t.
Hopefully, justice is served, but you never know, so please have Barry Washington Jr’s family and friends in your thoughts.
Flip the page for the DA speaking on how this was a racially motivated crime.