Andrew Brown Jr. was shot five times and killed by a single gunshot to the back of the head when North Carolina sheriff deputies opened fire on his car last week as they moved in to serve drug and arrest warrants, according to the results of an independent autopsy released Tuesday by the family.
Brown, an unarmed Black man, also sustained four shots to his right arm, which were non-fatal wounds, attorneys said. As he attempted to escape the gunfire by pulling his car out of a driveway at his home, he was shot in the back of the head, killing him, said attorney Ben Crump, citing an independent pathologist hired by Brown’s family to examine his body.
The release of the autopsy results comes a day after attorneys for the Brown family described the shooting as “an execution” following the family’s first viewing of a heavily redacted version of body camera footage which showed Brown had his hands on the steering wheel throughout the entire episode.
No evidence has been presented so far to indicate that Brown threatened the officers in any way.
At a news conference Tuesday in Elizabeth City, where the shooting occurred, Brown’s son Khalil Ferebee questioned why deputies had to shoot so many times at a man who, he said, posed no threat.
“Yesterday I said he was executed. This autopsy report shows me that was correct,” he said at the news conference. “It’s obvious he was trying to get away. It’s obvious. And they’re going to shoot him in the back of the head?”
For days, witnesses at the scene were the only ones to provide any early accounts of the shooting in which Brown was mortally wounded as Pasquotank County Sheriff’s officers executed a search warrant about 8:30 a.m. April 21 at Brown’s residence just west of the Outer Banks.
Lawyers for the Brown family also continued to express outrage Tuesday that the full body camera footage remains concealed from the public.
Only two family members were allowed into city municipal offices Monday to see a small clip of the police video, which was cut down to about 20 seconds, said Crump, who gave a statement with other attorneys about what happened in the meeting.
“Let’s be clear, this was an execution,” said family attorney Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, who took notes as she watched the video Monday with the family members. “Andrew Brown was in his driveway, and his hands were on his steering wheel [when officers] ran up to his vehicle shooting.”
The move to redact the video came after days of protests that put growing pressure on Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten II, who finally petitioned the court Monday for release of the footage.
The video seen by the family did not begin from the start of the confrontation between Brown and a cadre of heavily armed deputies, lawyers said.
Shots were already being fired at the man as the 20-second video began, according to attorneys.
Lassiter said Brown’s hands remained on the steering wheel as officers continued shooting at him.
At one point Brown began to back out of the driveway to escape the gunfire and managed to pull away until the car came to rest after crashing into a tree. Lassiter said officers had the vehicle surrounded and were chasing the vehicle on foot while still firing their guns at Brown.
She said at least seven or eight officers were on the scene and that assault rifles may have been used to shoot Brown. Only one officer’s body cam footage was shown to the family, and no other footage or dashcam video was presented to the family.
Multiple shots were heard being fired in the video, Lassiter said. Attorneys said they believed the officers had started firing well before the video began.
Some of the officers were SWAT team members and some may have been plain-clothed, lawyers said.
On Tuesday, Crump shared a video on social media showing a band of helmeted deputies riding in the bed of a sheriff’s pickup truck as they rounded a street corner on their way to Brown’s home. Crump said the video was provided by the Elizabeth City Council.
A day earlier, Crump accused the sheriff’s department and other officials of an ongoing cover-up.
“We do not feel that we got full transparency,” he said. “We only saw a snippet of the video.”
By Tuesday, the FBI regional office in Charlotte announced that it had opened a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting.
The redactions to the video took more than an hour to complete, at which time family was allowed inside to view the video, according to family attorneys.
“They only showed one body cam video, when we know there were several videos,” Crump said Monday.
The family finally saw the shortened body cam video Monday hours after a death certificate was issued in the case, stating Brown died from a gunshot wound to the head, according to reports.
One Brown family attorney, Harry Daniels, revealed Monday that he received a phone call from county officials earlier in the day that informed him the meeting with the family would be delayed so footage could be redacted before being shown to them.
Other attorneys for the family, including Bakari Sellers, gave an earlier news conference outside city municipal offices Monday continuing to call for the video’s public release, saying “police can’t sweep this under the rug.”
Officials have not said when or if the video would finally be made public.
Anticipating unrest in the community, Elizabeth City Mayor Bettie Parker declared a state of emergency ahead of the family seeing the footage, which many hoped would shed light on why deputies opened fire last Wednesday.
Pasquotank deputies descended on Brown’s Elizabeth City residence to serve felony drug arrest warrants and other search warrants when he was shot and killed. Wooten said multiple deputies fired shots, but he disclosed few other details.
Wooten cited an “active criminal investigation” by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation as the reason he could not answer many questions about the case.
At a press briefing the day after the shooting, officials promised transparency in the case but refused to release video of the incident, saying they lacked the legal authority to do so.
“Only a judge can release the video,” Wooten said last week. “That’s why I’ve asked the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to confirm for me that the releasing of the video will not undermine their investigation. Once I get that confirmation, our county will file a motion in court, hopefully Monday, to have the footage released.”
Under North Carolina law, a judge must generally sign off on the release of law enforcement body camera footage.
In the days following the shooting, racial justice advocates, community leaders, clergy, Brown’s relatives and leaders of the Elizabeth City government have demanded the release of the footage. A coalition of media also has filed a petition in court to make it public.
The state’s Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper issued a statement calling for the swift release of the footage.
All the while, protesters took to the streets demanding to know exactly what happened.
Wooten and Chief Deputy Daniel Fogg issued a statement a day after the shooting suggesting deputies at the scene feared Brown was a dangerous suspect due to his criminal history.
Nearby Dare County had issued two arrest warrants for Brown on drug-related charges including possession with intent to sell cocaine. Brown, 42, had a criminal history dating back to the 1990s, including past drug convictions.
Police on a drug task force reportedly watched Brown for more than a year prior to the shooting, according to WAVY TV reporter Jason Marks.
Over the weekend, seven deputies were placed on administrative leave and three others resigned, although the department said the resignations were unrelated to the shooting.
One witness who lives on Perry Street where the shooting happened said Brown began driving away when one of the deputies fired into his car multiple times. At least six to eight shots were heard before Brown’s vehicle skidded out and eventually hit a tree, Demetria Williams said in interviews with local news stations.
“When they opened the door, he was already dead,” Williams told The Associated Press. “He was slumped over.” She said officers tried to perform chest compressions, but it was too late.
A car authorities removed from the scene was marked with multiple bullet holes, and the rear window was blasted out.
The deputies who opened fire were wearing active body cameras at the time of the shooting, said Wooten, who would not identify the officers nor how many shots were fired.
No deputies were injured, Wooten said.
Family members said Brown, a father of seven children, had no weapons and was unarmed at the time.
Wooten and other officials have not confirmed the family or eyewitness version of events.
The State Bureau of Investigation will turn the findings of its review over to District Attorney Andrew Womble, who pledged a thorough and deliberate inquiry.
“What we are looking for at this time will be accurate answers and not fast answers,” Womble told a news conference. “We’re going to wait for the full and complete investigation ... and we’ll review that and make any determinations that we deem appropriate at that time. This will not be a rush to judgment.”
The shooting happened as police departments across the country are facing increased scrutiny from the public following a series of recent high-profile police killings and custody deaths of unarmed Black men and women.
The incident in Elizabeth City came one day after police in Columbus, Ohio, shot and killed Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old Black girl who was involved in an altercation with two other girls and lunged at one or both of them with a knife.
Another recent police shooting of an unarmed Black man occurred April 11 outside Minneapolis when 20-year-old Daunte Wright was killed during a traffic stop in which Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kim Potter said she mistakenly fired her gun instead of a Taser.
Both episodes occurred during the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, who was found guilty April 20 on three counts of killing George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes last year.
This is a developing story. Please stay with AJC.com for the latest details.
About the Author
