Tomika Miller weeps over her husband Rayshard Brooks as his coffin is closed at the conclusion of his public viewing at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Monday.

Curtis Compton/AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Curtis Compton/AP

Tomika Miller weeps over her husband Rayshard Brooks as his coffin is closed at the conclusion of his public viewing at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Monday.

Curtis Compton/AP

The funeral for Rayshard Brooks, the Black man who was fatally shot during an encounter with police at a fast food restaurant earlier this month, is set to take place Tuesday in Atlanta.

The private service is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. ET at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. served as co-pastor. A public viewing for Brooks was held at the church on Monday.

“Rayshard Brooks wasn’t just running from the police. He was running from a system that makes slaves out of people. A system that doesn’t give ordinary people who’ve made mistakes a second chance, a real shot at redemption,” the church’s senior pastor, Rev. Raphael Warnock, is planning to say in his eulogy, according to a brief except provided to NPR.

Brooks’ death on June 12 happened less than three weeks after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Tensions and anger over systemic racism and police brutality were already simmering as protesters took to the streets in Atlanta and other cities across the nation.

At the public viewing on Monday, some mourners paying respect to Brooks wore shirts that said “Black Lives Matter,” while others stood silently before the gold casket where his body lay.

The scene had many similarities to the one that played out two weeks ago in Houston at the public viewing for Floyd. His body was placed in a similar gold casket.

Floyd, who was also Black, was killed when a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck for several minutes. Chauvin faces a second-degree murder charge.

Officers charged in Brooks’ killing

The two officers involved in Brooks’ killing have also been charged.

Garrett Rolfe, the officer who fired the fatal shots, was terminated from the Atlanta Police Department. Rolfe is facing 11 charges, including felony murder and 10 other charges. If convicted, he faces the possibility of life without parole or the death penalty.

The other officer, Devin Brosnan, remains with the APD and is facing lesser charges.

In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Brosnan described Brooks’ death as “a total tragedy.”

He also told the AJC he taken aback by the district attorney’s decision to charge him in Brooks’ killing, but added, “I’m still willing to cooperate.” At the same time, he and his lawyer told the newspaper that he has not agreed to testify against Rolfe as a witness.

Officers were called to a Wendy’s after Brooks fell asleep in the restaurant’s drive-through. Once on the scene, video of the encounter released by APD show that officers talked Brooks for more than a half hour.

Brooks was responsive to police demands, admitted he had been drinking earlier and performed a sobriety test, which he failed.

As Rolfe and Brosnan then struggled to get handcuffs on him, he was able to take one of the officers’ stun guns. And as he was running away from the officers, he fired it back at police.

After giving a brief chase, Rolfe used his service weapon and fires three shots, two of them striking and killing Brooks.

Tyler Perry, the Atlanta-based movie and television mogul, is reported to be covering funeral costs for the family.