5/16/2023 0 Comments Photo gun north keith scott![]() Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney, who is also black, said ahead of the announcement that his officers were ready for whatever reaction met the decision. Vinson, who shot him, is African American, but several high-profile cases of shootings of black men around the nation have involved black police, and activists point out that the race of officers has no bearing on statistics that suggest disparate use of deadly force against black men in the United States. It’s unclear whether Murray’s report with satisfy critics of Scott’s shooting. Scott was taking several medications, and officers said that he appeared to be in a “trance-like” state, consistent with the side effects of some of those medications. Murray said that no other officers fired. Murray said officers ordered Scott to drop his gun at least 10 times, which he did not do as he exited his SUV, and so Vinson shot Scott four times, striking him in the wrist, abdomen, and shoulder. The prosecutor rejected speculation, based in part on analysis of photos from the scene, that Scott was unarmed, saying that several officers saw the gun and it was recovered, with Scott’s DNA, at the scene, although Murray acknowledged that videos do not show the gun in Scott’s hand. Officers said they saw Scott reach for his holster. Murray said police returned and made contact with Scott. While Scott, a convicted felon, was not legally allowed to own a gun, officers did not know that at the time, and North Carolina is an open-carry state. The officers said they did not intend to apprehend Scott for such a minor offense, but then saw him with a gun in his car, and decided to leave the scene and return with marked cars. He opened his door and emptied tobacco out of a cigarrillo, then proceeded to roll a blunt with marijuana. According to police, Scott returned to the scene and parked next to the unmarked van. Murray showed surveillance video from a convenience store, and said that a bulge visible on Scott’s right ankle was a holster. They believed he was trying to look into the car, but then drove away. He said that two officers, including Vinson, who is black, were in an unmarked van and wearing plainclothes, doing surveillance, when Scott pulled up next to them. Murray gave a detailed timeline of the shooting, which was captured in part by police body cameras, at Wednesday’s press conference. Scott’s was one in a string of cases in which police officers shot a black man under debatable circumstances, and protestors suggested that police had been too hasty in firing. They laid bare strains in the relationship between the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police and the city’s African-American population, as well as lingering racial and socioecononic tensions in the rapidly growing economic center. The shooting set off several days of protests, some violent, in Charlotte this fall. He said that 15 career prosecutors had unanimously agreed on the decision. “It is my opinion that Officer Vinson acted lawfully when he shot Keith Scott,” Murray said. He said he had met with the Scott family earlier on Wednesday and that relatives had been “gracious.” He said the event was tragic and that no one should have to deal with it. Mecklenburg County District Attorney Andrew Murray said during a press conference that Vinson, an officer with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, had acted reasonably in firing on Scott, whom Murray said had a handgun and was brandishing it in view of the officers. Officer Brentley Vinson will not face any criminal charges in the shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, in September, a prosecutor announced Wednesday morning.
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