Charlotte’s police chief said Thursday that police bodycam video of the events that led to an officer killing Keith Lamont Scott does not show the 43-year-old black man brandishing a gun at police, but does support law enforcement’s version what happened on Tuesday.
Scott’s death has resulted in two consecutive nights of sometimes violent protests in Charlotte, North Carolina. One person was shot and critically wounded Wednesday night apparently by another protester. Several police officers received minor injuries. Businesses were vandalized, shops were looted, and police fired tear gas at protesters and arrested 44 people. The National Guard and the State Highway Patrol are helping local police and Governor Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency.
At a news conference Thursday, Kerr Putney, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police chief, said the bodycam videos he watched did not offer “absolute definitive, visual evidence” that Scott pointed his weapon at officers, as they had claimed.
“What I can tell you, though, is when taken in the totality of all the other evidence, it supports what we’ve heard and the version of the truth that we gave about the circumstances that happened that led to the death of Mr. Scott,” he said.