Navajo Nation President Begaye Requests US Justice Department to Investigate Brutal Police Killing of 27-Year-Old Mother
Loreal Tsingine with her daugther, Tiffany.
WINDOW ROCK – On Wednesday April 6, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye issued a letter to Honorable Loretta E. Lynch, Attorney General of the United States, requesting that the U.S. Department of Justice investigate the shooting death of Loreal Tsingine, a 27-year-old Navajo mother.
Austin Shipley, a three-year veteran of the Winslow Police Department, shot and killed Loreal Tsingine on Easter Sunday.
Tsingine was shot five times on Easter Sunday, Apr. 24, by Winslow Police Officer Austin Shipley who responded to an alert of shoplifting at a local convenience store. Officer Shipley aggressively tried to detain Tsingine when a struggle ensued. It was reported that Tsingine pulled out a pair of scissors which the officer saw as a significant threat and he then opened fire on her with five gunfire shots.
In the letter to Honorable Lynch, President Begaye states that because the shooting of tribal member Tsingine took place outside of Navajo territorial jurisdiction, “the Navajo Nation is not in a position to investigate such an action.”
President Begaye also stated that there have been many reports of excessive force and unlawful police stops made by Winslow Police officers to Navajo tribal members.
“We believe these reports strongly indicate that a practice of discrimination exists in the Winslow community against tribal members, and discrimination of this kind is prohibited by federal law and U.S. Department of Justice should investigate and enforce federal law against this discrimination” he stated in the letter.
The president strongly urged the involvement of the U.S. Department of Justice in assisting the Navajo Nation in protecting its tribal membership living the area and for those living outside the Nation’s territorial jurisdiction.
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Levi Rickert, a tribal citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, is the publisher and editor of Native News Online. Previously, he served as editor of the Native News Network. He is a resident of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
There is discrimination and has existed forever at border towns… Winslow, AZ; Holbrook, AZ; Flagstaff, AZ; Farmington, NM; Page, AZ for more then 30 years and I have experienced many of them first hand.
just a few questions?
1. why do we have to go by the constitution and all of white mans laws. so why do we as natives have to abyed by them?
2. How come the white man always get by with killing us, people of color?
3 the white cops just get away with murder.
4, so when can we overcome this problem?
and the moral of the story is – shoplifting is a crime, don’t resist arrest or pull a knife or scissors on a police officer.
Not a single legally reliable fact is available to the public Bob. There is NO, repeat NO evidence she shoplifted, resisted, was in posssesion of scissors or any threat to anyones safety, or that she was even the individual of interest in the police response. The only verifiable fact is that she was killed, by gunshots, from the named. And if you think for one second it is justified for anyone to kill anybody in the false narrative as it is published…..
I have always thought the Indians have been abused . I have read about the injustice that was done to the Indians, it is a shame that some people are color blind.
please notify me of the out come, i am interested
This makes me very sad! How very beautiful this woman was! Her daughter now has no mother. My brother who is a enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe was shot 7 times last year in Salem, S.D. I guess I’m just wondering how this is not National News worthy but anyone else suffering police brutality would be all over all the National major networks. It doesn’t seem fair. I didn’t know her but just wanted to say that her life matters to me. I will pray for her family and for her beautiful daughter