US: No charges against officer who shot black NC man

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON

The officer who fatally shot a black man outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, will not face charges, the prosecutor in charge of the case announced Wednesday.

Officer Brentley Vinson “acted lawfully” when he shot Keith Lamont Scott, Charlotte-Mecklenburg District Attorney Andrew Murray told reporters at a protracted press conference announcing the decision.

Officers went to the apartment complex Sept. 20 to serve a warrant in an unrelated case.

Police have maintained they saw Scott, 43, with a gun and marijuana in a car.

After identifying themselves, police say they demanded Scott exit the vehicle and drop the gun, but he refused.

He exited only after a uniformed officer smashed his front passenger window with a baton, and then backed away from officers, but did not drop the weapon.

At that point Vinson, who is black, opened fire, shooting four times at Scott, according to Murray. In total, Scott was hit three times, he added.

Scott’s family has insisted he was unarmed, but Murray said he had a Colt .380 handgun with the safety off and one round of ammunition chambered.

The weapon landed near Scott’s waistline after he was shot and his DNA was found on its grip and slide, Murray said.

He also acknowledged that no video recovered from the incident definitively shows Scott with a gun in his hands.

In video of the incident, Scott’s wife, Rakeyia Scott, can be heard yelling that he is unarmed, a claim she repeated in subsequent news interviews. She also tells officers in the video that Scott is recovering from a "TBI", or traumatic brain injury.

Scott was injured in a 2015 motorcycle accident.

Murray pointed to surveillance video from a nearby store that appears to show the outline of an object in Scott’s right leg. He said it was “consistent” with the form of a gun in an ankle holster later described by officers at the scene.

Shortly after Murray's press conference, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department posted on Twitter that it "appreciates work by State Bureau of Investigation & District Attorney."

Scott's family, however, said it was "profoundly disappointed" by the decision not to criminally charge Vinson.

"All our family wanted was justice and for these members of law enforcement to understand that what they did was wrong," the family said in a statement.

"While we understand that many in the Charlotte area share our frustration and pain, we ask that everyone work together to fix the system that allowed this tragedy to happen in the first place.”

Scott’s death ignited days-long widespread unrest in Charlotte, North Carolina’s largest city, that at times turned violent with looting and vandalism overflowing on to city streets.

The National Guard was deployed to the city and a curfew was imposed to quell the violence, though it was selectively imposed to allow peaceful demonstrators to protest.

The killings of black men at the hands of police have prompted protests across the country, particularly after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri two years ago.