(Reuters) – Lawyers for the family of a Black man killed by sheriff’s deputies in North Carolina during an attempted arrest are planning to release the results of an independent autopsy on Tuesday in a shooting they have called an “execution.”
The fatal shooting last Wednesday of Andrew Brown Jr., 42, led to six straight nights of protests in Elizabeth City, a riverfront community near the Virginia border whose population of about 18,000 is half African American.
The shooting occurred one day after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd, concluding a highly publicized trial that had put a national spotlight on police violence against Black people.
Lawyers for Brown’s family have called a news conference for 11 a.m. ET (1500 GMT) on Tuesday, where they plan to release findings from an independent autopsy into his death.
On Monday, the lawyers said police body camera footage shown to them indicated that Brown had his hands on the steering wheel of his car and was complying with orders when several deputies began firing at him in his driveway.
They said the deputies continued firing their weapons after Brown drove his vehicle away from them, calling his death an “execution.” The lawyers also accused officials of withholding evidence after being shown only 20 seconds of footage from one police body camera.
Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten and Chief Deputy Daniel Fogg have said the deputies were trying to serve search and arrest warrants on Brown stemming from a felony drug charge. They urged the public to reserve judgment until all the evidence is reviewed by the State Bureau of Investigation, which is overseeing the probe.
Wooten’s office said on Friday that seven sheriff’s deputies had been placed on administrative leave after the shooting.
“This tragic incident was quick and over in less than 30 seconds, and body cameras are shaky and sometimes hard to decipher. They only tell part of the story,” the sheriff said in a video posted on social media on Monday.
An attorney for Brown’s relatives, Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, said the family will continue to seek the release all law enforcement video of Brown’s shooting death, not just the 20-second clip of the incident.
“We are still trying to get transparency,” Cherry-Lassiter told CNN on Tuesday. “We would like the whole 10 (additional) seconds, we would like to see all the body cam footage, we would like any dashcam that’s available, just any information that we can provide to the family so they can know what happened to Andrew.”
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut and Peter Szekely in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
