Just a few hours after giving a video interview explaining his support for Trump, Sixty-year old Bernell Trammell was shot dead near the very spot it was filmed.
Police are looking for ‘unknown suspects’ in the murder, and it is not yet certain if the man was murdered over his outspoken support of Trump.
Kevan Penvose wrote on Facebook that Trammell “was a man with whom I hardly ever agreed about anything he wrote on his signs, but also, as a Rasta street preacher, he was one of the people that make my neighborhood so uniquely wonderful. Around 12:30 this afternoon I heard gunshots nearby as I was working at my dining room table. Soon after, I was reading reports on social media of a shooting around the block, at the location of this one-of-a-kind storefront that I’ve walked by a million times… Peace and light, Ras Bernell.”
Armstrong Ramsone (the pen name of local artist and writer Adebisi Agoro) wrote on the site The God Degree that he recorded video interviews with Trammell just hours before his death. “Earlier today he had mentioned to me ‘you wouldn’t guess the amount of hate I received from Black people,’” he wrote. Agoro became curious about Trammell’s political beliefs after seeing him at a bus stop and decided to ask “about what I saw on Facebook and why he was holding the Trump sign?” Agoro recorded videos of an interview he conducted that day in which Trammell, clutching a pro Trump sign, explains his political beliefs. You can see those videos here.
“I have encouraged Afro-Americans from all walks of life and culture here in Wisconsin and particularly here in Milwaukee to vote Donald Trump for this year. Trump 2020. I believe Trump is the sign of the times,” Trammell says in one of the videos, recorded outside his publishing business near the very spot where he would be shot a few hours later. He is standing in front of a “Wisconsin Vote Donald Trump” sign in that video.
“No less than two hours after I left from filming Ras Bernell I had heard word from Facebook that the someone in the area that Ras Bernell stays in had been shot,” Ransome wrote on The God Degree. “To my surprise it was Ras Bernell. The moment I had read the news I was attempting to upload the above videos used in this post onto my laptop for use…He was murdered right outside of his shop where we were just speaking. His home. Seemingly these were his last words.” Heavy
Some who knew him are already speculating that this is what got him killed.
The man certainly held some unusual views on a number of topics. But…
Reggie Moore, Milwaukee Office of Violence Prevention director, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he had “intervened in a dispute between Trammel and a young man” that he thought was “related to a Trump sign that Trammell was carrying.”
Moore told the newspaper that Trammell was “a Black elder who didn’t deserve to die the way that he did.” Heavy has reached out to Moore for more information on the encounter and Trammell’s importance to the community. It’s not clear whether that encounter had anything to do with Trammell’s death, though, because police aren’t saying anything about motive or suspects. Heavy
What if it does turn out that he was killed for supporting Trump?
For one thing, that would just be one more elevation of violence against Trump supporters… violence that has been downplayed, normalized, and even CHEERED among many on the Left (sitting Democrats are among those who have been openly cheering the injuries inflicted upon Rand Paul by his neighbor.)
It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen an attempt to take the life of a Republican. The explicitly political attempt at assassinating Scalise was thwarted only by the heroic work of the police.
Somehow, we suspect this story won’t get the same media attention as some others.
