KEY POINTS
- Brown's family, attorneys say new footage shows the shooting was an "ambush"
- Attorneys say Brown posed "no threat" to the law enforcement officers
- Protestors demand a public release of bodycam footage
New bodycam footage from North Carolina deputies who fatally shot Andrew Brown Jr. last month shows that the unarmed Black man did not threaten or even make contact with law enforcement officers as he tried to flee in his car.
The deceased man's family was on Tuesday given a second opportunity to view body and dash-camera footage of his killing. Brown's family members were able to view about 20 minutes of footage, six videos in total, that has not been made public. They said it did not show Brown threatening, or even making contact with the officers.
The new footage was shown to the family by the Pasquotank County Sheriff's Office after a court order. Attorneys for Brown's family on Tuesday said that the new evidence found in the footage shows he was "ambushed" in a "massacre," and that the officers’ actions warrant criminal charges, NBC News reported.
"We were able to see where they (the deputies) possibly reached out to make contact to him. But we did not see any actions on Mr. Brown’s part where he made contact with them or try to go in their direction. In fact, he did just the opposite,” Chance D. Lynch, a lawyer who reviewed the recordings with the family, was quoted as saying by the New York Times.
Allegations of police brutality have multiplied Photo: AFP / THOMAS COEX
The new findings of Brown's attorney contradict District Attorney R. Andrew Womble's account. In an April 30 court hearing, Womble had said that the video footage he reviewed shows Brown’s car making contact with deputies as he tried to drive away when the officers approached him to serve a drug-related search and arrest warrant. The incident happened outside the deceased man's home in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, on April 21.
According to Womble, "deputies were prompted to fire because Brown made contact with them both behind and in front of the vehicle."
Earlier a private autopsy done on the request of the Brown family concluded that he was shot five times.
“There were so many shots that we found difficulty in counting the number of shots that his vehicle received,” Lynch was quoted as saying by NYT. “At some point, there was a final shot, where it appeared that at that final shot Mr. Brown lost control.”
Lynch said that they counted at least six bullet holes in the side of the car and six more in the back windshield. "At no point did we see Mr. Brown pose a threat to the law enforcement officers that were there," he added.
Previously, another attorney, Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, said that Brown was not touching anything and was trying to get out of the situation alive by trying to drive off.
Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina, along with the Brown family, has asked Womble to hand over the case to a special prosecutor. Meanwhile, protestors, peacefully, have taken to the streets to denounce the shooting and are demanding that officials make public the entire two hours of body and dash camera video.
