$3M deal in suit over Black man’s death

A North Carolina sheriff’s office announced a $3 million settlement on Monday in a lawsuit filed by the family of an unarmed Black man who was shot and killed in his car by sheriff’s deputies more than a year ago.

The family of Andrew Brown Jr. had filed a $30 million civil rights lawsuit in 2021, saying the man died because officers showed “intentional and reckless disregard of his life.”

Brown was killed on April 21 of last year by Pasquotank County sheriff’s deputies while they were serving drug-related warrants at his Elizabeth City home. Several deputies surrounded Brown in his BMW before his car backed up and moved forward. They fired several shots at and into his vehicle. He was killed by a bullet to the back of his head.

District Attorney Andrew Womble had said at a news conference last year that Brown used his car as a “deadly weapon,” causing deputies to believe it was necessary to use deadly force. But lawyers for the Brown family said the shooting was unjustified because Brown was trying to drive away — not toward the deputies and that he posed no threat. After viewing body camera footage of the shooting, they said Brown was sitting in his stationary car with his hands on the wheel when the first of numerous shots was fired.

The settlement was approved by the Pasquotank County Board of Commissioners. It includes a special $1 million appropriation to go along with $2 million from the county’s insurance policy, which was supplied by the North Carolina Counties Liabilities Pool, according to a statement from the sheriff’s office provided to The Associated Press.

That amount is at the limit of the policy.

The settlement was reached over several weeks last month in the case overseen by a federal magistrate in U.S. District Court in Raleigh, the news release said.