The district attorney investigating the police shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. called his family’s characterization of the shooting “patently false” after viewing body camera footage of the incident.
“As it backs up, it does make contact with law enforcement officers,” District Attorney Andrew Womble, the prosecutor for North Carolina’s First Judicial District, said of the car Brown was driving before police fatally shot him.
“The next movement of the car is forward,” Womble continued. “It is in the direction of law enforcement and makes contact with law enforcement. It is then and only then that you hear shots.”
But the prosecutor’s version of events differs from Brown’s family, who said Brown was no threat to officers when they opened fire on him in the car.
NEW FOOTAGE RAISES SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE BRYANT FAMILY’S VERSION OF EVENTS
“Andrew had his hands on his steering wheel. He was not reaching for anything. He wasn’t touching anything,” said Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, the family’s attorney.
“He had his hands firmly on the steering wheel,” she continued. “They run up to his vehicle shooting. He still stood there, sat there in his vehicle, with his hands on the steering wheel while being shot at.”
Despite seeing the same footage as the prosecutor, Brown’s family argued that police opened fire before he started to drive away.
“His car was riddled with bullets, shooting him when he was not threatening them in any form or fashion,” Cherry-Lassiter said. “There were shell casing before he even backed out. So they were shooting at him when he was sitting there with his hands on the steering wheel in the driveway.”
The contradicting characterizations of the footage may only help to intensify calls for authorities to release the video publicly, a demand from protesters who have taken to the streets every day since the April 21 incident.
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A judge has ordered the body camera footage be withheld from the public for at least 30 days while the investigation unfolds, but he did give authorities a 45-day deadline for releasing the video.
The ruling came as the FBI Charlotte Field Office also opened a civil rights investigation into the incident.
