Fruitvale station 10 years on: Oscar Grant's legacy remembered a decade since Oakland Police shot him dead

Killing went viral after onlookers recorded the moment on mobiles, sparking riots and protests across America

It was the brutal police killing caught on mobile phone video that shocked the world, sparked riots in California and spurred thousands of protesters to take to streets across America.

The shooting dead of Oscar Grant by officer Johannes Mehserle 10 years ago did what no similar moment of horror had ever done before: it went viral on social media.

The footage – in which the 22-year-old is seen being gunned down from behind at an Oakland train station – sparked such outrage over institutional racism and police violence it was called America’s most seismic policing moment since the 1991 beating of Rodney King. The incident was later turned into a film, Fruitvale Station, starring Michael B Jordan.

Now, a decade on, mourners have gathered to mark the anniversary of the father-of-one’s New Year’s Day death.

Some 200 people – including family, friends and local officials – gathered at the interchange for a four-hour ceremony of prayers, speeches and poetry.

“When Oscar died, I knew, like thousands of people in this city and millions in the world, that we needed to change structures,” said Lateefah Simon, a current board director of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) rail system where the slaying occurred. “So I ran for the BART board, and you all elected me.”

That the shooting of Mr Grant was a defining moment in modern US history, there is little doubt.

It was, Pastor Tommy Smith told the crowd, “a stimulus point, the beginning of a community effort.”

Because several onlookers captured the killing on video and posted the footage to YouTube, authorities were unable to dictate perceptions of what had happened. In a way that had never happened before, the police officers involved were held to account by the recordings of ordinary bystanders.

Mehserle was charged with second-degree murder and eventually found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. In an age before Black Lives Matter, Mr Grant, from the nearby city of Hayward, became a potent symbol that America remained inherently unequal.

Isaiah Martin, 19, attended Tuesday’s ceremony because he remembered watching the shooting online at his home, also in Hayward.

“It was eye-opening — to think that could happen to me,” the computer science student told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The killing itself occurred at 2am on 1 January, 2009.

BART police officers had been called to reports of a major disturbance, involving 20 men, on a train packed with New Year revellers coming from San Francisco.

When the vehicle arrived at Fruitvale Station, officers dragged Mr Grant off. He had, it was later revealed, been fighting with David Horowitch, a then 34-year-old who he had met while serving prison time for a drugs related conviction.

As he was forced to the floor by officer Anthony Pirone, Mehserle took his gun out and shot Mr Grant once in the back. The officer – whose wife gave birth to their first child later that same day – told a court he believed he had pulled his Taser from his holster. He was heard to say: “Oh s***, I shot him.” Mr Grant died from the single bullet wound.

Speaking at Tuesday’s ceremony, his mother, Wanda Johnson – who raised Mr Grant alone while his father served a life sentence for murder – said: “It caused us not to just accept when a person is killed but to really examine what took place”.

She and other members of the family have applied to rename the station and a small side street after Mr Grant, she told the crowd. “Fruitvale Grant Station — we’re claiming that,” she said. “We believe that, and we will fight.”