At least 12 North Carolina cops were injured during violent protests after a black officer fatally shot a black man who was believed to be armed — though a woman claiming to be his daughter livestreamed that he was shot “for being black.”
Keith Lamont Scott, 43, was shot Tuesday afternoon at The Village at College Downs, a Charlotte apartment complex, where police looking for another person with an outstanding warrant saw Scott in a car, police said.
The Charlotte-Mecklenberg officers saw Scott get out of the car with a gun and then get back in, police spokesman Keith Trietley said.
He got out of the car again armed with a firearm “and posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers, who subsequently fired their weapon striking the subject,” police said in a statement.
“The officers immediately requested Medic and began performing CPR,” the statement said.
Scott was taken to Carolinas Medical Center and pronounced dead. Detectives recovered a gun and were interviewing witnesses, Trietley said.
Officer Brentley Vinson, the two-year veteran who shot Scott, was placed on administrative leave, which is standard procedure in such cases.
Lyric Scott, who said she is Scott’s daughter, claimed in a Facebook video that quickly went viral that he was unarmed and just reading a book in the car while waiting for the school bus to drop off his son.
She claimed her father — who was disabled — was Tasered and shot four times.
“The police just shot my daddy four times for being black,” she said in the video.
“They jumped out their truck. They said, ‘Hands up! He got a gun! He got a gun!’ Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!” she said. “That’s it. He had no gun.”
Police declined to respond directly to the woman’s allegations in the hourlong livestream.
“A life has been lost today, a life was taken and y’all want to block everybody out!” one community member said in a Facebook video, CBS News reported.
Protesters took to the streets holding signs that said “Stop Killing Us” and “Black Lives Matter” — while chanting “No justice, no peace!”
By Wednesday morning, there were reports of motorists on Interstate 85 being hurt and their vehicles damaged when protesters flung rocks, bottles and traffic cones off overpasses onto traffic below, the paper reported.
At least seven of the injured officers needed to be hospitalized after the clashes, including one who was struck in the face with a rock.
In addition to the mayhem at I-85, protesters looted a Walmart, which was closed early Wednesday with wooden pallets piled in front of the doors.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department tweeted that demonstrators destroyed marked police vehicles. Images from the scene showed police firing tear gas to break up the crowd. Some officers were in riot gear.
One TV news crew retreated after demonstrators attacked its remote van, which was parked near the apartment complex where the shooting occurred.
Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts appealed for calm and tweeted that “the community deserves answers.”
The unrest in Charlotte came just hours after another demonstration in Tulsa, Oklahoma, over the shooting there of an unarmed black man by police.
In Tulsa, hundreds of people rallied outside police headquarters calling for the firing of police officer Betty Shelby, who shot 40-year-old Terence Crutcher on Friday during a confrontation in the middle of a road that was captured on police dashcam and chopper video.
Shelby’s attorney has said Crutcher was not following the officers’ commands and that Shelby was concerned because he kept reaching for his pocket as if he were carrying a weapon.
An attorney representing Crutcher’s family said Crutcher committed no crime and gave officers no reason to shoot him.
Local and federal investigations into that shooting are ongoing.
With Post wires