Yemeni youth killed by police in Louisiana, USA

A young Yemeni man with American citizenship was killed yesterday, Monday, by police gunfire in the US state of Louisiana, amid conflicting accounts of the manner and motives of his death.

Yemenis of America website said that Louisiana State Police opened an investigation into the killing of a 25-year-old Yemeni-American man, after he was shot by an officer and a deputy sheriff of Ascension County.

"The victim who was killed outside a gas station has been identified as Abdulrahman Al-Jabal, a resident of Gonzales," he added.

Police say in their account that Mountain "exited his vehicle with a handgun and, despite repeated commands from officers to drop the weapon, fired into the air before pointing the weapon at officers, prompting an Ascension County Sheriff's Deputy and a Gonzales Police Officer to shoot him." He was taken to the hospital, where he died from his injuries.

Sources told UWK that the victim was a former employee of the gas station outside of which he was killed, and had returned there around midnight on February 10 to collect his last paycheck. Sources say that at some point, he threatened the cashier and stole money from the safe, before going out into the parking lot and firing several shots into the air, some of which hit the station building. Police arrived at the scene after receiving a report from an employee of the station, while details about the identity of the station owner have not yet been released.

In a different account from the police account, Yemenis of America indicated that Yemeni-American activists published a video clip showing the moment of the shooting, and they confirmed that the victim was not armed at the time of the incident.