Andrew Brown Jr. family, lawyers view more bodycam video, dispute claim he drove car into ‘contact’ with deputies before they fired
Andrew Brown Jr.’s adult sons and their lawyer viewed more bodycam video Tuesday and said the Black man shot dead during a raid in North Carolina last month never drove into contact with deputies before they opened fire.
A prosecutor previously claimed Brown’s car made “contact” with law enforcement before deputies started unloading their weapons, hitting Brown in the head and killing him at the scene.
“We were able to see Mr. Brown sitting in his vehicle as he was ambushed,” family lawyer Chance Lynch said after viewing five bodycam videos and one dashcam video behind closed doors with Brown’s sons.
Lynch said Brown was sitting at the wheel of his car “possibly on the phone” when he appeared to be “surprised” by the arrival of heavily armed Pasquotank County sheriff’s deputies serving a drug-related arrest warrant at his house in Elizabeth City on the morning of April 21.
“At all times, his hands were visible. At all times, you could see he was not a threat. There was a shot fired. When the shot was fired, he put the car in reverse, putting several feet if not yards away from the police who were there,” Lynch said at a press conference streamed live by WAVY.
“He turned his wheel to the left, to turn it away from the law enforcement officers. At no point did we ever see any police officers behind his vehicle,” Lynch said.
“At no point did we ever see Mr. Brown make contact with law enforcement. We were able to see where they possibly reached out to make contact to him, but we did not see any actions on Mr. Brown’s part where he made contact with them or tried to go in their direction,” he said.
As Brown tried to escape the onslaught by driving across his yard, a second shot was fired, causing Brown to “increase his speed,” Lynch said.
The lawyer said the video showed “police officers standing on the pavement unloading their weapons” on Brown’s car as it made tracks in the mud until it was “clearly across the yard.”
“There were so many shots that we found difficulty in counting the number of shots,” Lynch said.
An independent autopsy commissioned by the family determined Brown died from a fatal gunshot to the back of his head.
Brown, a 42-year-old father of seven, lost control of his car after the final deadly shot and was pulled from the vehicle and placed face down on the ground after it crashed into a nearby tree, Lynch said Tuesday after viewing the bodycam video.
“It was absolutely and unequivocally unjustified,” he said of the shooting.
The deputy bodycam recordings have not been released to the public, but street-level video obtained by WAVY-TV showed the deputies arriving at Brown’s residence and immediately yelling “Hands up!” only seconds before shots were fired.
“He wasn’t in the wrong, at all. What’s in the dark will come to the light,” son Khalil Ferebee said after viewing nearly 19 minutes of the bodycam footage Tuesday following a prior trip to the sheriff’s office to view only 20 seconds two weeks ago.
“My father did not deserve to die, at all. He did not deserve to be killed in any way, shape or form. He did not pose any threat, at all,” son Jha’rod Ferebee said Tuesday after also viewing the multiple videos. “Come court, there’s no way that this could be justified. There’s no way possible.”
Fellow family lawyer Chantel Cherry-Lassiter previously called the shooting an “execution” after viewing the 20-second snipped with Khalil last month.
“At no time in the 20 seconds that we saw was he threatening the officers in any kind of way,” she said. “He was trying to evade being shot. So he backs out, not forward, away from the officers,” she said April 27.
Seven deputies were placed on administrative leave following the shooting.
The deadly incident sparked immediate outrage and focused national attention on the small, majority Black town of about 18,000 people just south of the Virginia border on the Pasquotank River near the coast.
The Rev. Al Sharpton delivered the eulogy at Brown’s funeral, and Brown’s family along with prominent civil rights activists have demanded the public release of all bodycam video in the case.
In prior video statements, Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten II has said multiple deputies fired shots and that the incident was under review by the State Bureau of Investigation as well as four other sheriff’s offices.
“This tragic incident was quick and over in less than 30 seconds,” Wooten has said.
“I want answers about what happened as much as the public does,” he vowed.
The sheriff called the family’s autopsy “important,” but said it is “just one piece of the puzzle” and he was waiting for the state investigation to gather more evidence.
