LOS ANGELES (CNS) – The father of slain Los Angeles High School football standout Jamiel Shaw II is among tonight’s scheduled prime-time speakers at the Republican National Convention.
Jamiel Shaw will be among two parents from Southern California who had children killed by people living in the country illegally set to speak in prime time tonight at the convention in Cleveland, according to organizers.
The other is Sabine Durden of Moreno Valley, whose son Dominic was killed in 2012 at the age of 30 in a collision with a Chevrolet pickup truck driven by an unlicensed driver. The driver had a previous felony conviction for grand theft, according to court records, and was in the country illegally.
Tonight’s theme is “Make America Safe Again,” with topics including the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, illegal immigration, national security and foreign policy.
The eclectic list of speakers includes Trump’s wife Melania; former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Jeff Sessions of Alabama; former Texas Gov. Rick Perry; Willie Robertson, the CEO of the duck-hunting merchandise manufacturer Duck Commander and star of the A&E documentary series “Duck Dynasty”; and actors Scott Baio and Antonio Sabato Jr.
Other speakers include the mother of U.S. Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, who was killed in the Benghazi attack; two members of the Annex Security Team who fought during the Benghazi attack; and the brother and sister of a slain Border Patrol agent.
Shaw has spoken at previous events featuring Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Shaw told the crowd at a Trump rally in Costa Mesa in April that when he saw television coverage of Trump announcing his candidacy on June 16, 2015, “for the first time, it gave me real hope.”
Shaw stood next to Trump at a July 10, 2015 news conference in Beverly Hills. Trump asked Shaw if his rhetoric was racist. Shaw replied, “It’s not racist. What he’s doing is he’s speaking for the dead. He’s speaking for my son.”
Jamiel Shaw II was shot and killed in 2008 near his Arlington Heights home by a gang member who prosecutors said mistakenly perceived him as a gang rival because he was carrying a red Spider-Man backpack.
Pedro Espinoza, convicted of first-degree murder in 2012 and sentenced to death, was living in the United States illegally at the time of the killing. He had been freed from jail two days before the shooting without immigration authorities placing a hold on him.
Trump said in 2015 that the 17-year-old Shaw was “shot from nowhere by an illegal who shouldn’t have been in the country, and nobody wants to talk about it. … The system is really screwed up.”
