North Carolina sheriff's deputies were justified in fatally shooting a Black man during an attempted arrest last month and no charges will be filed against law enforcement, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Andrew Brown Jr., 42, was shot while behind the wheel of his car on April 21 in Elizabeth City as Pasquotank County sheriff's deputies were serving a warrant for his arrest on felony drug charges.
District Attorney Andrew Womble said Brown's shooting death, "while tragic," was "justified due to his actions."
"No officers will be criminally charged," Womble said. "The officers' actions were consistent with their training and fully supported under law."
Deputies had wanted to arrest Brown the night before but he didn't come home, according to the prosecutor.
And deputies, in the moments they confronted Brown, had reason to believe his car could be used as a deadly weapon, Womble said.
"The deputies faced both actual and apparent danger as perceived by them on the scene," Womble said. "This apparent threat was reinforced by Brown's dangerous and felonious use of a deadly weapon. As tragic as this incident is with the loss of life, the deputies on scene were nonetheless justified in defending themselves from death or great bodily injury."
He added, "There is insufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to show that any of the deputies acted in a manner that was inconsistent with their perception of an apparent threat."
Womble cited case law that grants police wide discretion in using deadly force against a fleeing suspect.
"Once a threat is perceived … and the officers fire the first shot, if the first shot is justified, the last shot is justified until the threat is extinguished," Womble said.
But Duke University School of Law professor Jim Coleman challenged Womble's claim that deputies were being threatened when Brown was fatally shot in the back of the head.
“But the question is, when is that threat extinguished?” said Coleman, who teaches criminal law. “It’s very clear what was going on: He was trying to escape; he was not trying to ram his car into officers.”
Throughout his lengthy presentation, Womble said sheriff's Sgt. Joel Lunsford could have been killed as Brown narrowly missed him early in the confrontation. But once Lunsford was missed, Brown didn't need to be killed, according to Coleman.
"The people firing from the side and behind, they were never in danger," Coleman said. "The idea that they were doing this to protect the guy whose hand was on the car, that couldn’t have been their thinking. It happened so fast and he had cleared the car by then."
An autopsy commissioned by Brown's family found he was shot five times, once in the back of the head. That report added to the findings of a state death certificate that showed he was shot five times and that Brown's immediate cause of death was a "penetrating gunshot wound of the head."
The district attorney has said officers fired only after Brown struck deputies twice with his vehicle. But his family's attorneys say the video is at odds with how law officials have framed the shooting.
Brown's relatives have questioned why deputies used deadly force when he was surrounded by law enforcement.
Chance Lynch, an attorney for the family, said last week that the video shows deputies fired at Brown, prompting him to move his vehicle away from them. After the shooting, Brown's vehicle was riddled with bullet holes, Lynch said.
The shooting occurred in a residential neighborhood in Elizabeth City, which is about 35 miles south of Norfolk, Virginia.
Sheriff Tommy Wooten has identified three of his deputies who opened fire at Brown that day: Investigator Daniel Meads, Deputy Robert Morgan and Cpl. Aaron Lewellyn.
The deputies fired 14 shots that day, nine from a pair of Glock 17 pistols and five from an AR-15 rifle, Womble said.
Further frustrating Brown's family is that body-worn camera footage of the incident has not been released to the public.
Such law enforcement video in North Carolina isn't classified as a public record, as it is in many states, which typically offer a defined, simple path for such footage to be publicly released.
But that's not the case in North Carolina, which requires a judge's order to allow such footage to see sunshine.
This is a developing story, please refresh here for updates.
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May 19, 2021 at 12:33AM
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