Gun mystery in Charlotte cop vid
Wife in vid: He has no weapon
THE WIFE of a black Charlotte man gunned down by cops screams that he is unarmed and begs for his life in a wrenching video shot in the seconds before she watched him die.
Yet the 2-minute, 16-second cell phone clip failed to definitively show whether the police shooting that ignited three days of protests and rioting in the North Carolina city was justified.
The video was released by Rakeyia Scott, hours after police put out a photo showing her husband’s body facedown on the ground with a blurry object a few inches from his feet that cops say appears to be a gun. Keith Lamont Scott’s body is behind crime scene tape in the photo, suggesting it was taken well after the shooting.
The same object, which some observers say looks like a glove, is not close to Scott’s feet in the video released by the Scott family that shows the moments immediately before and after Officer Brentley Vinson fired. At one point, a cop appears to be dragging something under his foot.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police have refused to make dashcam or body cam videos of the shooting public. Cops claim the public release of the videos could harm the family — even though relatives have said they support showing the footage to the public. Police Chief Kerr Putney promised transparency, but cops only released the still image a witness posted to social media.
Putney claimed the police videos generally support the police account of events — that cops were in imminent danger — without definitively saying whether Scott pointed a weapon at police.
The wife shot the disturbing clip with her phone as police surrounded her 43-year-old husband in a sun-splashed condominium parking lot. She released it Friday with no warning.
“He has no weapon!” the increasingly upset Rakeyia Scott shouted at police. “He doesn’t have a gun. He has a TBI (traumatic brain injury). He’s not going to do anything to you guys. He just took his medicine.”
Her husband was injured in a motorcycle accident last year, she told NBC News.
Tensions were already high as the video begins, with the wife yelling “Don’t shoot him!” five times in rapid succession to the cops.
As she speaks, the repeated shouts of one officer are audible in the background: “Drop the gun! Drop the gun! Drop the f--ing gun!” Scott exited his pickup truck off-camera as the shouting continued.
The sounds of four gunshots soon followed as the wife watched helplessly.
“Did you shoot him?” she yells at the cops. “He’d better not be f--ing dead. I know that f---ing much … ’Cause he didn’t do nothing to them. I know he’d better live.”
The video was provided by the Scott family’s attorney to NBC News and The New York Times. No footage of the actual shooting has been released. In the wife’s video, her phone veers wildly once the first shots are fired.
While police said Scott was armed, some witnesses reported that he was carrying nothing more lethal than a book — and his mother said it was a copy of the Koran. Cops say there was no book.
A police source later told local television station WSOC-TV that Scott had a gun and that tests revealed that his fingerprints, DNA and blood were on the weapon. The video shot by Rakyeia Scott captures only her husband lying facedown and motionless on the pavement, with no sign of a gun. Cops in her video can be heard ordering Scott to “drop the gun” at least 10 times
The wife’s video release led to heightened calls for cops to go public with the police videos of the Tuesday shooting.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts
were among those urging a release of the videos as quickly as possible.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani has also called for the release of the police videos.
State Attorney General Roy Cooper, who’s running for North Carolina governor in November, suggested releasing the videos would help start the healing between cops and citizens.
Charles Monnett, one of the Scott family attorneys, released a statement saying the slain man’s relatives went public with their video “in the name of truth and transparency.”
The lawyer said the Scotts “encourage everyone to reserve judgement until all the facts are known. This is simply one step in our quest to find the truth.”
Demonstrators marching through Charlotte the last three nights chanted, “Release the tape!” One person was killed and 44 arrested during Wednesday night rioting, with protesters attacking reporters, smashing the windows of local businesses and setting fires.
A suspect was arrested Friday in the fatal shooting, with authorities repeating that law enforcement was not involved in the death.
Mayor Roberts urged both presidential candidates Friday to stay away from Charlotte until the city “is back to order.”
Clinton, who had an event scheduled there Sunday, announced through a campaign statement that she will postpone the visit until tensions have eased.
Scott’s mother, speaking Friday, encouraged protesters to remain calm going forward.
“Give up the rioting,” Vernita Scott Walker told WCSC-TV of Charleston, S.C. The violence “makes it bad for the family,” she said.
Putney remained unmoved by the public sentiment, reiterating Friday that he will keep the video clips under wraps until there is a “compelling reason” to go public.
Putney has confirmed that videos exist from a police dashboard cam and an officer’s body cam, and the Scott family saw both on Thursday. Neither video showed clearly whether Scott was armed, although Putney maintained the footage “supports what we said.”
A second Scott family attorney, Justin Bamberg, said it was “impossible to discern” from the camera angles in the police videos whether Scott was holding anything at all.
In the video made public Friday, Rakeyia Scott begins shouting at her husband to voluntarily climb out of his white pickup truck. Things escalate quickly once she arrives on the scene.
“Keith, don’t let them break the windows!” she yells, her voice rising. “Come on out the car, Keith. Don’t do it. Keith, get out the car.
“Keith, don’t you do it! Keith! Keith! Keith! Don’t you do it!”
It was unclear if she was addressing her husband or the police at the scene.
Scott’s wife started filming after she walked outside to bring her husband a phone charger — only to see the standoff unfolding before her eyes. At the end of the video, Rakeyia Scott aims her phone at the police officers huddled around her mortally wounded husband’s body.
“These are the police officers who shot my husband,” she announces. “And he’d better live.”