Family: Charlotte Victim Was Unarmed, Reading Book When Shot

Conflicting accounts are emerging about the fatal police shooting of a black man in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Tuesday afternoon that triggered widespread violence overnight. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police say they were looking for an individual with an outstanding warrant in an apartment complex parking lot when they encountered Keith Lamont Scott, 43, who they say they saw leave a vehicle with a gun. According to a police statement, Scott “posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers, who subsequently fired their weapon striking the subject” and “the officers immediately requested medic and began performing CPR.” He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Police Chief Kerr Putney later said Scott was not the individual they were looking for. A woman who identified herself as Scott’s daughter in a video live-streamed from the scene said that he was unarmed when he was shot. In the video, the woman claims Scott was disabled and was reading a book in his car waiting for a child to be dropped off by a school bus when he was tasered and shot four times. Police said they recovered a firearm Scott was holding; they identified the officer who shot Scott as Brentley Vinson, who is also black.