Hours before police shot him outside a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant in Atlanta on Friday, Rashard Brooks had done what dads do: enjoyed a father-daughter day in honour of his little girl’s eighth birthday.
The party was supposed to roll into the next day with a skating celebration. But Brooks, 27, would not be there, USAToday reports.
The father of four was shot by an Atlanta police officer while fleeing during a struggle at a Wendy’s drive-thru late Friday night and died at a hospital, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Brooks had been asleep in his car at the drive-thru, causing other customers to drive around the vehicle, GBI said.
Police were dispatched to Wendy’s around 10:30 p.m. and conducted a sobriety exam on Brooks, who failed the test, then resisted officers’ attempts to arrest him, according to investigators.
Rayshard Brooks was a father of four.
GBI Director Vic Reynolds said Brooks grabbed a Taser from one officer and appeared to point it at the officer as he fled. The officer fired three shots.
Family attorney Justin Miller said Brooks took his daughter to get her nails done and pick up something to eat Friday. Saturday, she put on a special dress for the second round of the big occasion, awaiting her dad. 
“She had her birthday dress on because she was waiting for her dad to come to pick her up to take her to go skating,” Miller said Saturday at a news conference. “While we were over there, they had a birthday party for her eighth birthday today with cupcakes … while we were sitting there talking with her mom about why her dad’s not coming home.”
Another family attorney, Chris Stewart, said Brooks worked at a “tortilla place.” He said the officer who shot Brooks should be charged for “unjustified use of deadly force, which equals murder.”
Stewart said attorneys were with the family Saturday and watched the children “play and laugh and be oblivious to the facts that their dad was murdered.”
“You can’t have it both ways in law enforcement,” Stewart said. “You can’t say a Taser is a nonlethal weapon … but when an African American grabs it and runs with it, now it’s some kind of deadly, lethal weapon that calls for you to unload on somebody.”
