Alton Sterling’s son breaks down as his mother addresses police shooting

Family members of Alton Sterling, a black man who was shot and killed by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Tuesday, gave an emotional press conference Wednesday about their lost loved one.

Cameron Sterling, Alton’s 15-year-old son, broke down and started sobbing uncontrollably during the press conference after his mother, Quinyetta McMillan, talked about how Sterling’s children had lost their father.

“Alton Sterling, regardless of if you knew him or not — he is not what the mass media is making him out to be,” said McMillan. She said Sterling, who worked as a cook and sold CDs in their neighborhood, according to the Advocate, “simply tried to earn a living, to take care of his children.”

“The individuals involved in his murder took away a man with children, who depended upon their daddy on a daily basis,” McMillan said. As Cameron, the oldest of Sterling’s five children, wept, McMillan said that Cameron has had to watch footage of his father dying on all the news outlets. “As a mother I have now been forced to raise a son who is going to remember what happened to his father,” she said.

#AltonSterling was the top trending topic on Twitter in the United States, as observers shared their grief and anger over the incident. It’s unclear whether Sterling was armed, as the two officers claimed, but video of the incident shows that Sterling was pinned down and immobile on the ground when he was shot.