CHARLOTTE PROTEST TURNS VIOLENT.
•North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency in Charlotte late Wednesday night as protests over the police shooting of a black man turned violent for a second night.
Groups of college students had gathered for a prayer vigil at the condominium complex parking lot where 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott was shot and killed Tuesday night.
After the vigil turned into a violent march through the downtown, a black male protester was shot and critically wounded in front of an upscale hotel.
Police said they did not fire on the man, who was pulled away by paramedics protected by police in riot gear, who a short time later fired tear gas at the hundreds of protesters.
McCrory said in a statement late Wednesday that he was also sending the National Guard to Charlotte as scattered groups of protesters continued to attack reporters and other people, break windows and set small fires in North Carolina’s largest city.
Earlier in the evening, the White House said President Barack Obama had called the mayors of Charlotte and Tulsa, Okla., to get an update on protests after fatal shootings of black men by police in both cities.
And in Tulsa, Rev. Al Sharpton said Wednesday he was planning rallies to demand justice for the family of Terence Crutcher, the unarmed black man who was fatally shoot by a white police officer Friday.
As Charlotte’s white mayor and black police chief stood at city hall and appealed for calm Wednesday, African-American leaders who said they were speaking for Scott’s family held their own news conference near where he was killed, reminding the crowd of other shootings and abuses of black men.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney said officers were serving arrest warrants on another person when they saw Scott get out of a vehicle Tuesday night with a handgun. A black plainclothes officer in a vest emblazoned “Police” shot Scott after the officer and other uniformed members of the force made “loud, clear” demands that he drop the gun, the chief said.
Neighbourhood residents say Scott was holding a book, not a weapon, as he waited for his son to get off a school bus. They also said the officer who fired was white and that Scott had his hands in the air. Police have refused to release any video.
Scott’s mother, Vernita Walker of Charleston, S.C., told The Charlotte Observer that her son had seven children. “He was a family man. And he was a likable person. And he loved his wife and his children,” she told the newspaper.
Scott had a criminal record in three states, including Texas, South Carolina and North Carolina. Texas records show that he was convicted of evading arrest with a vehicle in 2005, and several months later of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.