One person has been shot by another civilian during the protests Wednesday night. Authorities had to use tear gas to disperse the protests in North Carolina’s largest city, which joins Milwaukee, Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, on the list of USA cities that erupted in violence over the death of black men at the hands of police.
Advertisement
At least one person was injured in the confrontation, though it wasn’t immediately clear how. “They just pulled up undercover”, she said in the video. The police fired flash grenades and then tear gas back, dispersing the crowd of several hundred.
Officials in Charlotte said the man was shot during a protest over the death of Keith Lamont Scott but was not wounded by a police officer, describing it as a “civilian on civilian” incident. He emerged from the vehicle armed with a firearm “and posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers, who subsequently fired their weapon striking the subject”, police said in a statement.
“My prayers are with the Scott family and also our law enforcement, especially the 16 police officers who were injured last night”. In the footage, she is at the cordoned-off shooting scene, yelling at officers. “He did not have a firearm”, one man told The Charlotte Observer.
“I can also tell you we did not find a book”, Putney told a news conference. Vinson, who was in plainclothes, fired after police determined he was “posing a threat”, Putney said. The chief said that both evidence and eyewitness accounts point to Scott being armed.
Another demonstration took place Tuesday outside of police headquarters in the midwestern city of Tulsa, where on Friday an officer killed an unarmed black man standing next to his vehicle.
On Tuesday night, dozens of demonstrators threw rocks at police and reporters, damaged squad cars, closed part of Interstate 85, and looted and set on fire a stopped truck. “We are saddened that once again we are waiting for more information about a black life lost in a police-involved shooting”, said an online statement from Equality North Carolina.
“It breaks my heart to see something like this happen, and I have a really hard time believing that Brent shot a man in his auto while waiting for his (son) for no reason”, Marsh said.
“My daddy’s dead! My daddy’s dead!” she screams. In a widely-circulated Facebook Live video, she said Scott was parked and waiting for a school bus to drop off his son when police arrived.
Protesters moved downtown from Trade Street to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
Scott has a lengthy criminal record, including convictions in Texas, North Carolina and SC.
Murphy said that if black lives don’t matter, black money shouldn’t matter.
The protest comes after police on Tuesday fatally shot 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott.
When police saw Mr Scott leave the auto with a gun, they deemed him as a threat and opened fire. Scott then attempted to get out of the vehicle with the gun in his hand, which is when he was shot by Officer Brentley Vinson, who is black and has been placed on administrative leave, as is standard procedure in such cases.
Advertisement
Police shootings in cities including New York, Chicago and Ferguson, Missouri, have sparked more than two years of largely peaceful protests punctuated by days of rioting and arson and given rise to the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement.
