Kaylee Patillo was one of the last people to speak to Danny Buckley, 64, before he was shot in the parking lot of Trader Joe’s on Perkins on Aug. 22.

The psychology senior and her roommate were approached by Buckley, a Black man and a known panhandler in the area, as they were leaving the grocery store. Patillo described him as polite and non-threatening.

Jace Boyd, 24, had turned Buckley away only moments before. Boyd saw Buckley approach the women and told him to stop bothering them.

“I heard a man say something, he was in his truck across from us in the aisle,” Pattillo said. “He said, ‘hey, leave those girls alone.’”

After hearing Boyd’s remarks and not wanting to get involved with conflict, Pattillo got into her car and waited for her roommate, who was still outside the car.

“My roommate gets into the car, looks over at me, and says, ‘I think that guy has a gun,’” Pattillo said. “I drove away, and I saw Boyd standing in his truck looking inside, and I assume this is when he was reloading his gun after he misfired.”

Boyd allegedly misfired and reloaded the gun before firing the single shot that struck Buckley in the abdomen, according to a police report released the day of Boyd’s arrest. Buckley was rushed to a hospital but succumbed to his injury.

Pattillo returned to Trader Joe’s after she noticed the large police presence but said she was turned away by officers when she offered her account of what had happened. The police spoke with Boyd and allowed him to go home after he claimed the shooting was in self-defense.

The next day, Pattillo was advised by a family friend to contact the police again about what she had seen. When she called to give her statement, she discovered that police were about to release a flyer with a picture of her car in the hopes of finding her for more information about the incident.

Police issued an arrest warrant for Boyd three days after the shooting and took him into custody on Aug. 27. Boyd is now being held on a $300,000 bond.

Pattillo believes if it had been a white man approaching her asking her for money, he would still be alive today.

“I can’t think of another explanation for why Boyd would feel threatened,” Pattillo said. “From what I saw and the evidence around the case, I believe it should be charged as a hate crime.”

Pattillo wishes more LSU students would take action on issues like this and believes most students do not think these issues matter because they are not directly affected by them.

“Over quarantine I ended up dropping from my sorority because I thought their response to the Black Lives Matter movement was very poor,” Pattillo said. “There are a lot of LSU students that spend their time partying and not thinking about the fact that there is a whole world out there and people are dealing with issues they just can’t ignore.”

A vigil for Buckley and Trayford Pellerin was held a week after the shooting in the Trader Joe’s parking lot with around 100 people in attendance. Pellerin was a Black man who was shot at least 10 times by Lafayette police on Aug. 21.

Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome attended the vigil and prayed with the crowd, according to the Advocate.

The vigil was organized by local grassroots organization Democracy @ Work LSU. Members advocate for worker cooperatives in the Baton Rouge and LSU communities, according to the organization’s Twitter bio.

Democracy @ Work member Soheil Saneei felt the group missed a critical opportunity to make demands with the mayor present.

“We organized the event very quickly so everything we decided was very impromptu,” Saneei said. “We wanted to make sure that community members and the victims involved had ample opportunities to speak and make demands so I shortened my speech and in the moment just didn’t incorporate clear enough demands but did call for a focus on the material conditions that the community is in need of.”

Saneei also said the group was expecting a bigger turnout, but overall, it was a “great way to make a connection to the Baton Rouge community.”

The organizations plans to work with the community to injustices such as white supremacy. Alton Sterling’s aunts, who were also in attendance, agreed to help the group with their prison bail initiatives.

Saneei said while raising awareness is part of the work, it is important to bring justice to families such as the Sterling’s who have been waiting for years.

“We need to get to a point where we don’t just talk about these issues, we force politicians and powerful people to change the institutions that perpetuate these injustices,” Saneei said. “Overall, we’re happy that the event occurred, but we’re perpetually learning how to become more impactful. Saturday was a great first step for us.”