Police have used tear gas to disperse protesters after officers were injured and a major road was shut down during a demonstration over the latest fatal shooting of a black man by U.S. police.
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The streets in Charlotte, North Carolina, are quite Wednesday morning after angry riots over the fatal police shooting of a man left officers injured and shut down an interstate.
It came just a few days after a white police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, fatally shot an unarmed black man who could be seen on video raising his hands above his head. According to the police, they were searching for a suspect with an outstanding warrant at the Village at College Downs apartment complex, when 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott got out of a auto with a gun in his hand. “Officers observed the subject get back into the vehicle, at which time they began to approach the subject”, the department said in its first statement about the shooting. More from WSOCAt that point, officers considered him a threat and fired their weapons.
The man who died was identified late Tuesday as Keith Lamont Scott, 43, and the officer who fired the fatal shot was CMPD Officer Brentley Vinson, a police statement said.
The 43-year-old man was shot and killed after police went to a block of flats in Charlotte, North Carolina, and saw a man inside a vehicle.
Demonstrators gathered near an apartment complex in the city of Charlotte where the shooting occurred, carrying signs that read “Black Lives Matter” and chanting “No justice, no peace”, local television reported.
She claims he was Tasered, then shot four times.
The injuries – none of them life-threatening – were reported in a tweet by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, but no other details were immediately provided.
WBTV reported that, in the video, the woman said Scott was sitting in his vehicle reading a book before the officers deployed a Taser and shot him four times. The website said the closure is due to police activity. His relatives told local media, however, that he was not carrying a gun, but had a book in his hands when he was gunned down.
CMPD Chief Kerr Putney told reporters it’s uncertain whether there was a connection between the suspect police had been seeking and Scott, WBTV says.
Protesters were met by police in riot gear late on Tuesday. Officials say about 12 police officers were hurt.
She said he was reading a book while sitting in his vehicle and waiting for the school bus to drop off his son. He has been placed on paid administrative leave. The claims have not been responded to by police but say they recovered a firearm at the scene. “He was an undercover and he just jumped out and yelled “gun” and shot at him”.
“The community deserves answers and (a) full investigation will ensue”, she said on Twitter, adding in a subsequent post, “I want answers too”.
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Local and federal investigations into that shooting are continuing.
