Pocatello community gathers to honor Victor Perez and protest police action towards him
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POCATELLO – People from across the community prayed for, mourned and honored a boy in the hour before he died Saturday during a candlelight vigil. Later in the day, some of the same people, along with others, held a rally on Pocatello Avenue to protest the police officers who shot him multiple times.
Victor Perez, 17, was taken off life support at around 10 a.m. on Saturday after a week-long struggle for survival. He was shot nine times by multiple Pocatello police officers.
Several hundred people gathered at 9 a.m. in a parking lot below Portneuf Medical Center to show support for Perez and his loved ones.
“I hope they walk through this with the light of the community and the love of their family,” said Samantha Thornock, one of the people who attended the vigil and the protest. “(Victor can) live on through them.”
The rally, held near the building that houses City Hall and the Pocatello Police Department, wasn’t organized by any one person or organization in particular.
“This is a grassroots event,” said Sunny Nelson, who led some of the chants during the protest. “There’s just a lot of people who are upset and … feel the need to make their voice heard.”
At the beginning of the rally, some of the protesters noticed and spotted two figures on the roof of the Housing Alliance and Community Partnerships building a couple of blocks away. EastIdahoNews.com spoke with an officer near the building, who confirmed they were PPD snipers. The officer said they were stationed up there due to a dangerous person at the protest, and said they disbanded them once the person had left.
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On Thursday — five days after the shooting — Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad issued a statement noting the tragic nature of the event and that the investigation is ongoing. The four officers involved, he said, were placed on “immediate administrative leave,” and the city will release body camera footage in the coming weeks.
In a news release on Facebook Friday, the city expressed its condolences to the Perez Family.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and loved ones during this unimaginably difficult time. We recognize the pain and grief this incident has caused in our community,” Mayor Brian Blad said in the release.
What happened to Perez, who had cerebral palsy and autism, has struck a chord for many people in the autism community. Serenity Jones Perry, who has two nephews with autism, attended the vigil with her mother, Angela Diaz, to show her support for Victor’s family.
“If that happened to one of my family members, I would be torn apart, and I wanted to show (the family) that I care,” Perry said.
One person at the vigil had personal experience with Perez’s disabilities. Ashlee Gugelman, an Instructional Paraprofessional in the Special Education Department of Irving Middle School, was at the vigil and taught Perez when he was in sixth grade.
“We had a very close bond, and I’m pretty outraged at what happened to him. That’s why I’m here — to support his family and him,” Gugelman said.
Gugelman explained that while his intellectual disabilities were prevalent and he struggled with motor functions, he was a happy kid.
“He was a very happy-go-lucky kid, just dancing all the time,” Gugelman said. “He was a very happy spirit, and we just had a really great time with him. He was a light to our classroom.”
Troy Gregerson, who was at the protest and has an autistic son who is mostly nonverbal, saw similarities between him and Perez.
“I’ve always been pro police, but for law and order — not a kill team. The video I watched — they didn’t use any of their training. They didn’t use any tactics, they didn’t investigate at all and they just opened fire,” Gregerson said.
Another parent of an autistic child, Brenda Welsh, who was at the protest, said that while she knows there are good police officers in the PPD, what happened to Perez has given her fear for her own son’s safety.
“It worries me that if something similar happens when he (gets) older … what is that going to look like for us and our future?” Welsh said.
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