National Guardsman stand on the street in downtown Charlotte, N.C. on Thursday, Sept. 22, 2016. “Keith! Don’t you do it!”
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Scott had been parked in his auto at the family’s apartment complex, waiting for his children to return home from school. A Charlotte resident of more than 20 years, she said she had not attended a protest since the 1960s.
A fatal police shooting Tuesday in North Carolina was filmed by the wife of the person who died, according to exclusive video footage released by NBC News Friday afternoon.
The clip does not show the actual shooting, or make clear if Mr Scott was carrying a gun, as police say. Uncertainty about the case prompted a fourth night of demonstrations through Charlotte’s business district. Police have said that he was armed, but witnesses said he held only a book. The 2 ½ minute video does not show the shooting, though gunshots can be heard.
RAKEYIA SCOTT: F**k. Did you shoot him? It was not immediately clear what Rakeiya Scott was advising her husband against doing.
“Don’t shoot him. Don’t shoot him”, she says. Scott’s wife asks. “He better not be f**king dead, he better not be f**king dead”. I mean did y’all call an ambulance?
Officer Brentley Vinson shot Scott. Authorities say a gun was recovered at the scene, but it’s unclear whether the weapon belonged to Scott or whether he had possession of it.
In the footage, Rakeyia Scott tells husband Keith Scott to get out of his vehicle as Charlotte police surround him.
Representatives for the police department and the mayor’s office didn’t return emails from The Associated Press seeking comment on the family’s video. The windows of the CVS were still boarded up from previous nights of protests.
The largely peaceful Thursday night demonstrations called on police to release video that could resolve wildly different accounts of the shooting this week of a black man.
That differed from his message a day earlier, when the chief said the public shouldn’t expect the videos’ release.
Charlotte-Mecklenberg police Chief Kerr Putney said he favors releasing the police videos surrounding Tuesday’s shooting, but only when enough information is gathered so that the videos can be part of a package so that the incident “can be fully understood”.
The video, posted on the newspaper’s website Friday, was recorded by the wife of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott.
Putney echoed her remarks, saying that the video’s release is “a matter of when; it’s a matter of sequence”. Cooper, a Democrat, is running for governor in November.
Charlotte is the latest USA city to be shaken by protests and recriminations over the death of a black man at the hands of police, a list that includes Baltimore, Milwaukee, Chicago, New York and Ferguson, Missouri.
The New York Times has posted video of the deadly encounter involving police and a black man who was shot by an officer in Charlotte.
Demonstrators were allowed to protest past a declared midnight curfew, but three individuals were arrested. Police Capt. Mike Campagna told reporters that officers would not seek to arrest curfew violators as long as they were peaceful. Putney said Friday that releasing it could inflame the situation. He told reporters the video will be made public when he believes there is a “compelling reason” to do so.
SCOTT: “I know he better live”.
Officials are discussing whether and when to release the police dashboard and body camera videos, Mayor Jennifer Roberts said. Clinton now plans to visit on October 2.
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Mr Scott, 43, was fatally shot in an apartment complex auto park on Tuesday by police who were searching for another person wanted for arrest. A suspect was arrested, but police provided few details. But he added: “When taken in the totality of all the other evidence, it supports what we said”. The only time the video shows Keith Lamont Scott is after he was shot.
