A 38-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by police in Madison, Wisconsin, was laid to rest Friday.
Corey Ruiz, 38, was fatally shot after he pulled out a knife in a struggle with four police officers last month, according to authorities.
Bystander video of the incident went viral on social media, prompting a series of protests in the Midwestern city and drawing fresh scrutiny over the harsh police tactics used on the city’s people of color. The video of his death raised questions about why lethal force was used after Tasers were deployed.
The funeral was attended by civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who is representing Ruiz’s family, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who delivered the eulogy. Relatives of Ruiz’s also spoke.
His mother, Elsa Ruiz, said her son was homeless and treated like “he was just a piece of trash,” Wisconsin Public Radio reported.
“He was not a piece of trash,” she said, according to WPR. “He was not a nobody. He was my son.”
Before the open-casket funeral began, Sharpton told reporters that he came to Wisconsin after watching bystander video of the shooting, WPR reported.
“This could be my brother,” Sharpton said. “This could be my nephew, and the fact that my name is Sharpton and their name is Ruiz means nothing to a cop that will unload and shoot multiple times, when they could have talked to him, they could have done multiple things.”
Madison police say that on July 22, officers approached Ruiz after receiving calls reporting that someone was stealing bicycles and checking vehicle doors.
Authorities said that after initially fleeing, Ruiz pulled out a knife during a struggle with officers and injured one of them. Officers said they tried but failed to shock Ruiz with a Taser before shooting him.
As of Friday, no arrests have been made in connection with Ruiz’s death.
When asked about potential arrests, a spokesperson for the Madison Police Department said in an email that “the investigation remains with DCI at this time,” referring to the Wisconsin Justice Department’s Division of Criminal Investigation.
“DCI will then turn things over to the District Attorney’s office who will make a charging decision,” the spokesperson, Officer Stephanie Fryer, said.
The Division of Criminal Investigation did not immediately return a request for comment.
Ruiz’s case was not the first high-profile killing of a Black man at the hands of a police officer in Madison. Tony Robinson was fatally shot by police in 2015, roughly a block and a half from where Ruiz was killed. And in 2012, Paul Heenan was killed by a police officer nearby.
Wisconsin public records show that Ruiz was convicted of 40 misdemeanors and felonies from 2009 to 2025, including robbery by force and strangulation.
Ruiz’s ex-girlfriend, who is the mother of his teenage daughter, previously told NBC News that Ruiz struggled with mental health issues, but declined to provide specifics. She said he was killed blocks away from where his daughter lives.
“She has to walk past his dying grounds and that memorial every day when she starts school,” she said. “Every day, she has to walk past that to get to school.”
