Black Teen Fatally Shot In Oregon Parking Lot Over Playing Loud Music

Another Black teenager has been shot and killed in an Oregon hotel parking lot last week after an argument about loud music.

Ashland Police Chief Tighe O’Meara told CNN that 47-year-old Robert Paul Keegan shot 19-year-old Aidan Ellison last week at the Stratford Inn. Keegan shot Ellison in the chest while he was sitting in his vehicle around 4:20 a.m.. where he was pronounced dead at the scene. The two had argued about the volume of Ellison’s music played in the parking lot.

According to O’Meara, Keegan was staying at the hotel with his parents and 3-year-old son at the time because they had been displaced by the Almeda Drive wildfire, which swept through Oregon in September.

“The only thing that caused this murder was the suspect’s actions,” O’Meara said in a Facebook post. “It happened because the suspect chose to bring a gun with him and chose to use it, 100% on him, not the poor young man that was murdered.”

On Thanksgiving Day, activists arranged a vigil for Ellison at the hotel.

“The murder of Aidan Ellison is another example of Southern Oregon’s racist history with and current practice of white supremacy,” Southern Oregon Black Leaders, Activists, and Community Coalition said in a Facebook post. “To be clear, Aidan was murdered because he was a young Black person who made a white man uncomfortable and refused to submit to that man’s personally-perceived authority — not because he was listening to music too loudly.”

Keegan was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, unlawful possession of a firearm, and recklessly endangering another person.

Last week he pleaded not guilty in court but is being held at the Jackson County Jail without bail until his next court date in February 2021.