The Seattle Police Department acknowledged on Tuesday what it called “community concerns” about the falling death on December 5 of Hamza Warsame, a 16-year-old high school student who took college courses at Seattle Central. The SPD pledged that Assistant Chief Robert Merner would personally supervise the investigation into his death.

Yesterday, Ikram Warsame, the boy's 18-year-old sister, led a boisterous march of several dozen students and supporters from the college to the SPD's East Precinct station. In an interview with The Stranger, she said it was frustrating to first hear on social media—where the hashtag #Justice4Hamza has gone viral—that police were not investigating the death as a homicide. When that came out, she said, people began speculating that her brother committed suicide. Others raised the possibility he had been murdered. The hashtag #Justice4Hamza has already trended in cities on five continents, according to Q13 Fox.

The SPD says the investigation is classified as a death investigation.

I asked Ikram whether her brother's death could have been an accident. "I think that the police—I have some faith in them to bring the truth," she said. "I hope they give us details. I'm just as clueless as everyone right now at this point in the investigation."

Another member of the family, Mumin Dimbil, told the Seattle Globalist he was frustrated with lack of communication by the SPD:

The family of Hamza Warsame criticized the lack of communication and sensitivity from police immediately after his fall.

“It is sad to say we do not know what happened and there has been a lack of communication from the police department,” said Mumin Dimbil, who says he is Warsame’s cousin...

“I want this case to be more on the facts, and not about what someone believes,” Dimbil said. He asked people “to refrain until we find the truth.”

In a conversation outside the precinct as protesters chanted, Captain Paul McDonaugh told Ikram Warsame, "I completely understand it. If I was a family member, I'd have a number of the same questions." Ikram responded, "This is important to me and to everyone here and to my family. That's the reason we're here today."

"It breaks my heart, because I know him," said Guyanthony Parramore, a classmate and friend of Hamza's, who described him as a cheerful young man—"very outgoing, open." He said if the department had pushed out information about Hamza's death to the community sooner, "then we wouldn't have so many issues."

The New York Times cited an anonymous police official yesterday who says a preliminary examination of the body shows no signs of injuries related to a beating or suggesting foul play.

The SPD did not respond to questions from The Stranger about its communication with the family and what role, if any, Habtamu Abdi, the SPD's new East African Community Liaison, has played in this case. After the killing of local teenager Abubakar Abdi in October, the police liaison was harshly criticized by a local graduate student for his absence, leaving the teenager's surviving friends to bury him on their own.

Meanwhile, in the background of all this, these are frightening times for Muslims in this country: There are widely-reported racist threats against Muslims both locally and nationally. The recent cover-up of a black teenager's death by Chicago police is the latest in a string of incidents that have compromised whatever trust many African-Americans may have had in police. For those reasons alone, and without jumping to any conclusions whatsoever: #Justice4Hamza.