Mayhem erupted in Charlotte, North Carolina, after 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott was shot by a black officer and died in hospital.
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News footage showed demonstrators swarming a police vehicle and what appeared to be the looting of trucks on Interstate 85 as protestors set fire to the contents.
A woman claiming to be Scott’s daughter said in a video posted on Facebook that her father was unarmed and had a book, not a gun.
Authorities say the man exited the vehicle armed with a firearm, then got back in. He posed an “imminent deadly threat,” police said in a statement Tuesday. “The officers immediately requested Medic and began performing CPR”.
Some residents who claimed to have seen the shooting insisted that Scott was not armed when he was shot by Officer Brentley Vinson, who has since been placed on administrative leave, which is CMPD policy for officers involved in shootings. “My prayers are with the Scott family and also our law enforcement, especially the 16 police officers who were injured last night”, McCrory said.
Local and federal investigations into that shooting are ongoing and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the Justice Department was in regular contact with Charlotte officials. “I find it very hard to believe that he would gun down an innocent man”. “In the interest of transparency and accountability, and particularly in light of conflicting accounts about the shooting, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department should quickly release any and all footage it has of the events leading up to the shooting, as well as the shooting itself”. She said he was simply parked and waiting for a school bus to drop of his son when he was killed.
One man said, “I’m a black guy so when I see this I’m thinking at any given moment when I get pulled over or stopped or a cop comes, it’s likely I’m gonna get shot”.
Some protesters were heard yelling ‘Black lives matter, ‘ and ‘Hands up, don’t shoot!’ One person held up a sign saying ‘Stop Killing Us’. Protesters have been demanding justice and an end to police brutality for months.
As many as 12 officers were injured during the overnight unrest and reports say motorists on I-85 were injured when items were thrown onto the highway, the Charlotte Observer reported.
On Tuesday, around 4 p.m., officers were searching for a suspect with an outstanding warrant at an apartment complex, Putney said during Wednesday’s press conference.
Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan previous year called for a nationwide economic boycott by blacks during the important Christmas shopping season, in part, because of the killing of blacks by police officers. The website says the closure is due to police activity. The attorney general also may step in to prosecute police at the request of a local district attorney, as Cooper did a year ago in the case of Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Randall Kerrick.
Putney said police dashcams did record parts of the confrontation and that the videos were being reviewed. Vinson, who joined the Charlotte police force in July 2014, is black, according to the department. “And when they’re being gunned down in the streets, or having cars intentionally try to run over them”, their lives are in danger, Newton said in an interview.
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At a press briefing Wednesday morning along with Mayor Jennifer Roberts, Putney said the presence of a gun was confirmed by multiple accounts, including by eyewitnesses.
