Walter Wallace Jr. is remembered 6 months after police fatally shot him

Three siblings stood in Malcolm X Park on Sunday and looked out at a crowd of more than 200 who gathered in West Philadelphia.

But there should have been four, said Lakitah Wallace, 28. Six months ago Monday, her brother Walter Wallace Jr. died at the hands of Philadelphia police.

“We will never let my brother’s name be forgotten,” said Lakitah Wallace, her voice catching. “Our lives matter. Our lives matter.”

In her brother’s honor, scores marched from 58th and Spruce to Malcolm X Park. The event marked one of the first times the family has appeared publicly since Wallace’s death. It was part of a multi-city rally calling for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Russell Maroon Shoatz, both convicted of killing Philadelphia police officers.

Lakitah Wallace — who was flanked by her sister Wynetta Wallace, Walter Jr.’s twin, and brother John Brant — led the crowd in a chant: “Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.”

“We want to give support to any family who has been traumatized by police brutality,” Lakitah Wallace said. “We want justice for my brother, we want justice for every other Black man who has been murdered and sacrificed in front of their loved ones.”

Wallace, 27, died from a volley of bullets fired by police Oct. 26 as he walked toward them with a knife and refused to drop the weapon despite their repeated calls for him to do so. His family has said he was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time.

Police had been called to his family’s home on the 6100 block of Locust Street after Wallace’s sister, brother, and a neighbor made frantic 911 calls, pleading for police to come and stop him from attacking his parents. Screams were audible in the background of those calls.

Wallace, an aspiring rapper and the father of nine children with a daughter due days after his death, had a history of battles with mental illness, as well as a criminal record.

Police had been called dozen of times in recent months about problems at Wallace’s home and responded twice on that Monday to reports of disturbances at the West Philadelphia residence before two officers responded to a third report that culminated in Wallace’s fatal shooting, according to law enforcement sources.

Coming after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky. and months of racial reckoning that swept the nation, Wallace’s death set off days of protests in his neighborhood and across the city as many denounced the use of police force against him. His family and others questioned why nonlethal options like Tasers or shooting to wound weren’t used and why more attention wasn’t paid to his mental health history.

Some questioned whether racial bias might have played a role in the shooting. Wallace was Black. The officers who shot him — Sean Matarazzo, 25, and Thomas Munz Jr., 26 — are white.

Earlier this month, Wallace’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Common Pleas Court, accusing the officers of using unreasonable force when they shot Wallace more than a dozen times outside his family’s home.

The family’s lawyer, Shaka Johnson, said he would file a separate lawsuit against the city in federal court, alleging that inadequate police training and the failure to equip the officers with Tasers led to Wallace’s death.

Wallace’s father, Walter Wallace Sr., asked those gathered Sunday to remember the value of every life. “We’re all human beings,” he said. “That’s all we are, and we deserve to live like anybody else.”

Wallace’s widow, Dominique, briefly addressed the crowd and grew emotional as she pointed to a row of photos of her late husband.

“This is all I have left of my husband are these images and my children,” she said. “I’m so grateful y’all made it your business to come out here.”

The shooting remains under investigation.