This 10-tweet story explains why the Freddie Gray verdict is so heartbreaking

The death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police officers was undoubtedly a tragedy, but according to a city circuit judge it wasn’t a crime.

Judge Barry Williams today found Edward Nero, one of the six officers involved in Gray’s arrest and subsequent fatal injury, not guilty of charges stemming from Gray’s death. It’s a verdict which stands as a bitter disappointment to those who see it as yet another example of the impunity with which law enforcement is able to operate. In tragedies such as Gray’s death, we often lose a sense of the life lived and lost, overwhelmed by the national significance of the death. In a series of tweets written in the aftermath of the verdict, writer and educator Clint Smith reminds us that Freddie Gray was above all, a person.

Five more BPD officers charged in Grey’s death are still awaiting trail.