THE KILLING OF ANDREW BROWN JR.
On April 21, 2021, 42-year-old Andrew Brown Jr. was fatally shot by Pasquotank in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Deputy officers attempted to serve him an arrest warrant before shooting him in the head. Seven officers were placed on leave as a result of the shooting.
Last week, the family of Andrew Brown was shown a short clip of police body camera footage. Family attorney Chantel Cherry Lassiter described it as an execution. Cherry-Lassiter said the video was 20 seconds long and showed deputies shot at Brown as he sat in his vehicle with his hands on the steering wheel. “He wasn’t reaching for anything, he wasn’t touching anything, he wasn’t throwing anything around,” she said.
“Brown then put the vehicle in reverse and backed out of the driveway, and deputies shot at him as he drove off,” she said. “The vehicle, riddled with bullet holes, crashed into a tree,” she said.
“This is tragic incident was quick and over in less than 30 seconds, and body cameras are shaky and sometimes hard to decipher. They only tell part of the story,” Pasquotank Sheriff Tommy Wooten said in a statement.
Seven officers went on administrative leave since the shooting. Two have resigned, and one deputy retired. Not all the deputies who were placed on administrative leave discharged their firearms. Still, they were all involved in the warrant operation. Brown’s family is demanding transparency and accountability after the delay in releasing the body camera footage.
The shooting happened the day after former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd. Floyd’s trial was the most high-profile case of the Black Lives Matter era. Yet, we are still dealing with police violence after Brown’s incident, and Ma’Khia Bryant’s life was taken in Ohio by a cop.
