KwaZulu-Natal rugby player Lindani Myeni had been on the phone with his wife Lindsay. He had told his wife he would be home “soon”, but Lindsay and their two young children would never hear from him again.

Myeni was shot by officers in Honolulu’s police force while they were responding to a call about an alleged burglary in progress. He was outside and unarmed at the time of the shooting.

Police shootings have been a hot issue in the US for many years. Research by renowned American news agency the Washington Post and the business data platform Statista indicate fatal police shootings in the US are increasing, with 292 civilians shot, 62 of them black, in the first four months of 2021. In 2020, there were 1,021 fatal police shootings.

The rate of fatal police shootings among black Americans is much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 36 fatal shootings per million of the population as of April 2021.However, there is little outrage for Myeni, or sympathy for his widow and children. Sunday Times · TimesLIVE