On Tuesday afternoon, police in Charlotte, North Carolina fatally shot Keith Lamont Scott, a man who witnesses said was unarmed and disabled, as they were searching for someone else.
In a report from local affiliate Fox-46, police were searching for a suspect with an outstanding warrant at an apartment complex when they saw Scott sitting in his vehicle. According to official reports from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, “The subject got back out of the vehicle armed with a firearm and posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers who subsequently fired their weapon striking the subject.” Police Chief Kerr Putney told reporters at the scene that Scott was not the person officers were looking for to arrest for the outstanding warrants, saying “I don’t believe [the man shot] was the one with the warrants, but we don’t know if there was a connection.”
In a Facebook Live video that has since been deleted, shot by a woman claiming to be Lamont’s daughter, she claimed that her father was unarmed and waiting for a school bus to drop his son off after school. The Charlotte Observer reports:
A woman who said she is Scott’s daughter claimed that the man was unarmed when he was shot. She live streamed a video from the scene on Facebook for more than an hour after the shooting.
In the video, the woman said her father was sitting in his vehicle reading a book and waiting for the school bus to drop off his son, according to WBTV, the Observer’s news partner. She claimed in the video that her father was Tasered and then shot four times, and that he was disabled.
Witness reports contradict the police’s statement, including the following from a woman who identified herself as Scott’s sister, who said that the victim was unarmed.
Protestors gathered near the scene of the crime Tuesday night surrounded by police in riot gear. A live feed from WCOS-TV shows a wall of police in riot gear, outnumbering the protestors and tear gas being deployed.
The officer responsible for the shooting has been identified as Brentley Vinson. As per CPMD protocol, he has been placed on administrative leave.
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