Wife in document: Man had gun, issued threat
A year CHARLOTTE, N.C. — before Keith Lamont Scott was shot to death by police in an incident that has convulsed Charlotte, his wife filed an application for a protective order against him that said he owned a firearm and had threatened to kill family members with it.
The document was filed by Rakeyia Scott in October in district court in Gaston County, which is near Charlotte. In a handwritten complaint, Rakeyia Scott asserted that Keith Scott had “hit my 8-year-old in the head a total of three times with his fist” and “kicked me and threaten to kill us with his gun.”
Rakeyia Scott added, “He said he is a ‘killer’ and we should know that.”
After the Sept. 20 police shooting of Keith Scott, authorities said they had recovered a gun at the scene. Family members said he did not have a gun with him when he was shot.
Justin Bamberg, a lawyer for the Scott family, said Tuesday that the assertions Rakeyia Scott made in the court filing had no bearing on the question of whether police officers should have used lethal force in their confrontation with Keith Scott.
Police say that they confronted him because officers saw him with a gun and what appeared to be marijuana and that they believed he posed a threat to public safety.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department released dashboard- and body-camera videos of the episode that do not show Keith Scott acting aggressively in the moments before an officer fires four shots. The incident was also captured on a video recorded by Rakeyia Scott in which she can be heard telling officers her husband does not have a gun. None of the videos definitively show whether he had a gun.
“Regardless of what details come out about his past, about what he may or may not have done in the past, nothing changes the footage we’ve seen,” Bamberg said.
In a statement, police officials said a handgun and an ankle holster had been recovered at the scene after Scott was shot.
In Gaston County in 2015, a magistrate judge issued a protective order the same day Rakeyia Scott filed the complaint stating that Keith Scott, a convicted felon, illegally owned a firearm.
While living in South Carolina in the 1990s, Keith Scott was charged with a number of offenses including check fraud, aggravated assault and carrying a concealed weapon, according to court records. Later, he moved to Texas, where he shot and wounded a man in San Antonio in 2002. He was sentenced in 2005 to seven years in prison and was released in 2011.
Gaston County records show a deputy sheriff was unable to serve Keith Scott with the October 2015 protective order. By Oct. 16, Rakeyia Scott filed a new notice with the court and asked to end the case, saying her husband was “no longer a threat to me and my family.”
In a separate interview last week, Bamberg said Rakeyia Scott had been unaware that her husband owned a firearm. On Tuesday, Bamberg said she did not believe he had had a firearm since he returned home in January from a long hospital stay following a motorcyle accident.
A family lawyer said assertions in the court filing had no bearing on whether officers should have used lethal force in the confrontation.