LOS ANGELES — Pharrell Williams says “everyone is heartbroken” after there was no grand jury indictment of a white police officer in the killing of a black Missouri teen.
Williams tweeted about the decision last week and said in an interview late Monday that his perspective on the case hasn’t changed since the shooting in August.
“My feelings have been the same since that boy was murdered,” Williams said backstage at The Voice in Los Angeles, where he’s a coach. “Everyone is heartbroken. It’s another teen, unarmed teen gunned down.”
The “Happy” hitmaker has been among the most high-profile recording artists to weigh in on the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson and the racially charged aftermath, in a recently published Ebony magazine interview and elsewhere.
“So I mean, what are we going to do, though? What are we going to do about it?” he said.
He declined comment on ongoing protests including school walkouts across the country.
“It’s not really about what I think. It’s about what you’re going to do. What are you going to do? He’s a teen who is gone,” Williams said. “He was gunned down. What are you going to do? You understand what I’m saying? That’s why it hurts. Because you have no answer. None of us do. He’s gone. That hurts.”
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