Victim killed after not giving up pistol
Charlotte police have released a narrative and video of what they say happened in the moments leading up to the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott.
The department said in an update released yesterday that two plainclothes officers were preparing to arrest someone else when they saw Scott sitting in an SUV, rolling a marijuana joint.
Officers say they weren’t concerned about the drugs until they noticed Scott had a gun, according to police. But after an officer ‘‘observed Mr Scott hold a gun up,’’ police put on marked vests to identify themselves as officers, police added.
The officers say they identified themselves as police and gave Scott orders to drop the gun, which he refused. A uniformed officer tried to use a baton to break out a window on Scott’s SUV, the narrative says.
Police say the man got out of the SUV, with the gun, and backed away while ignoring the demands to drop it.
Perceiving Scott’s actions as an ‘‘imminent physical threat’’, Officer Brentley Vinson fired his weapon at Scott, according to the statement. Both Vinson and Scott are black.
The report also says forensic examination shows Scott’s DNA and fingerprints on the loaded gun retrieved from the scene and that Scott was wearing an ankle holster.
The dramatic video footage released shows officers surrounding Scott with his hands at his side before shots are fired and he buckles to the ground. Scott can be seen in police dashboard camera video backing away from his SUV with his hands down, and it’s unclear if there’s anything in his hands. Four shots are heard, and he falls to the ground.
The footage was released after several days of demonstrations that have coalesced around demands that the public see the video.
Videos from the dashboard camera and the body camera also show the sequence of events leading up to the shooting. The dashboard camera footage starts with two officers pointing their guns at Scott, who is inside the SUV with the doors closed and windows rolled up.
Scott gets out and starts walking backward before shots are fired.
From a different angle, police body camera footage shows an officer approach with his gun drawn and another officer already pointing his gun at Scott. When Scott comes into view, he has his hands at his side and is standing outside of his SUV. The body camera footage doesn’t show the moment the shots are fired, and Scott next comes into view already on the ground.
Police also released photos showing what they say showed a handgun and marijuana that were in Scott’s possession.
Before releasing the footage, Chief Kerr Putney said at a news conference that he received assurances from the State Bureau of Investigation that letting the public see the video would not impact their independent probe of the shooting.