Friends, family and community leaders attended the funeral of Ramarley Graham, who was shot by the police in his family's home. He was unarmed, and relatives have asked for an investigation.
More than two weeks after an unarmed teenager was fatally shot by a police officer in the Bronx, hundreds of friends, relatives, activists and elected officials packed a church for his funeral.
The service on Saturday morning at Crawford Memorial United Methodist Church on White Plains Road was held as the family and their representatives continued to call for further investigation into the circumstances that led to the death of the young man, Ramarley Graham, who was 18.
From behind the white casket, which was decorated with white roses, many speakers criticized the police.
“This is an unnatural and inexcusable occasion,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton. “Because this young man was killed in an unjust way.”
On the afternoon of Feb. 2, officers in a narcotics unit spotted Mr. Graham and, believing that he had a gun, followed him into his family’s home in Wakefield.
Minutes later, one of the officers, Richard Haste, encountered Mr. Graham in the bathroom of his apartment, where, the authorities said, he might have been trying to flush marijuana down the toilet. With Mr. Graham’s grandmother and 6-year-old brother nearby, Officer Haste shot and killed Mr. Graham.
After the shooting, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said that Officer Haste and his sergeant, Scott Morris, had been stripped of their guns and badges. Mr. Kelly also ordered an internal review of operations involving low-level narcotics transactions.
Steven Reed, a spokesman for the Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson, declined to say on Saturday whether a grand jury had been impaneled in the case because such proceedings are secret.
“It is still under investigation,” Mr. Reed said.
Jeffrey L. Emdin, a lawyer who is representing the Graham family, said that Mr. Graham’s grandmother, Patricia Hartley, 58, as well as his 6-year-old brother, would be crucial witnesses in the case since both were inside the apartment at the time of the shooting.
“I think both the grandmother and the little boy are excellent witnesses in that they, unfortunately, saw everything that happened,” he said. “They are both, unfortunately, scarred by what they saw.”
At the funeral, some speakers evoked the memory of Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant who in 1999 died in a fusillade of 41 police bullets in the Bronx. Others focused on the specifics of Mr. Graham’s killing.
“Why go into the home without a warrant?” asked the Bronx borough president, Ruben Diaz Jr., adding that city officials must answer that question and others.
During the eulogy, Kirsten John Foy, a Pentecostal minister and an aide to Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, and who was detained by the police himself during last summer’s West Indian Day Parade, offered a warning: If the coming mayoral election is not about police accountability, he said, “We will be here again.”
After the service, as Mr. Graham’s casket was loaded into a hearse, expletives were shouted at several police officers across the street.
Rosemarie Melbourne, 52, carried a handwritten sign that asked the police to stop “terrorizing” children.
“We want the same respect they give other communities,” she said.