Police ‘executed’ black man Andrew Brown Jnr in North Carolina shooting, lawyers say
- Andrew Brown Jnr was killed by deputies serving drug-related search and arrest warrants
- He was shot in the back of the head and had his hands on car steering wheel, lawyers say
Lawyer for the family a black man shot by sheriff’s deputies in North Carolina during an attempted arrest last week, said body camera footage showed he had been “executed” and accused officials of withholding evidence.
Lawyers said 42-year-old of Andrew Brown Jnr had his hands on the steering wheel of his car when multiple deputies began firing at him in his driveway in Elizabeth City, a riverfront community near the Virginia border.
The deputies continued to shoot after Brown drove his vehicle away from them, according to Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, who said Brown never presented a threat to the team of seven or eight officers at the scene.
“They were shooting and saying: ‘Let me see your hands!’ at the same time,” Cherry-Lassiter, one of a team of lawyers for the family, told a news briefing on Monday. “Let’s be clear: this was an execution.”
The shooting last Wednesday, a day after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd after a highly publicised trial, has so far led to small, peaceful protests in Elizabeth City, whose population of roughly 18,000 is half African-American.