Graphic Dashcam, Bodycam Video Released by Charlotte Police (Video)
Charlotte police released dashboard camera and body camera footage Saturday evening of the events prior to and immediately following the shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott by officers on Sept. 20.
Neither piece of footage shows Scott pointing a gun at officers, as police who were on the scene during the fatal standoff have claimed. Scott’s family contends that he was carrying a book at the time, not a weapon.
“You can’t clearly identify what, if anything, is in his hand,” attorney Justin Bamberg, who represents the Scott family, said at press conference on Saturday evening.
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Although police maintain that Scott was armed, in cell-phone footage filmed by Scott’s wife Rakeyia, she can clearly be heard telling police that her husband, 43, didn’t have a gun.
“Don’t shoot him. Don’t shoot him. He has no weapon. He has no weapon,” Scott says in the video. “Don’t shoot him.”
Scott was fatally shot in a Charlotte, North Carolina apartment complex parking lot as officers looked for another man named in a warrant. Scott’s family said he was sitting in his car reading a book, waiting for his son to come home from school.
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Before the police videos were released Saturday, Charlotte police chief Kerr Putney told reporters earlier that day that “there is no definitive visual evidence that he had a gun in his hand.”
Additional reporting by Brian Flood.
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