Wife of Keith Scott, Charlotte Shooting Victim, Filmed Fatal Encounter With Police

By RICHARD FAUSSET and YAMICHE ALCINDORSEPT. 23, 2016

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A cellphone camera video made by the wife of Keith Lamont Scott as he was fatally shot by the police here shows the moments before and after the incident, including the wife’s pleas to her husband to get out of his truck and her pleas to the officers not to shoot him.

But the video, which was given to the Times by lawyers for the family Friday, does not include a view of the shooting itself. Nor does it answer the crucial question of whether Mr. Scott had a gun, as the police have maintained.

One of the lawyers. Justin Bamberg, who, is representing the family along with Eduardo Curry, said in an interview Friday that the video did not prove whether the shooting was justified or not. Rather, he said, it offered “another vantage point” of the incident. He said he hoped the Police Department would release is own videos of the shooting, as protesters have been demanding since Mr. Scott was killed on Tuesday afternoon.

The lawyers said the cellphone video was shot by Rakeyia Scott, Mr. Scott’s wife on Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Scott had parked his truck in a visitor’s space in their apartment complex, where he often waited for one of his children to return home on a bus. The police were there to serve a warrant on someone else.

The lawyers said Ms. Scott had come out of the apartment with a cellphone charger for her husband and noticed that police officers were around the truck.

The two-minute-and-12 second video begins with shaking images of grass and the voice, apparently that of an officer, shouting, “Hands Up!”

City officials have refused to release the police video of the shooting, saying they do not want to impede their investigation.

The beginning of the video shows a view of Mr. Scott’s white pickup truck, and multiple police officers around it. Mr. Scott is not visible.

Immediately, Ms. Scott says, “Don’t shoot him,” and begins walking closer to the officers and Mr. Scott’s vehicle. “Don’t shoot him. He has no weapon. He has no weapon. Don’t shoot him.”

(Full transcript below.)

An officer can then be heard yelling: “Gun. Gun. Drop the gun. Drop the fucking gun,” at the same time that another police vehicle, lights flashing, turns in front of the camera.

“Don’t shoot him, don’t shoot him,” Ms. Scott pleads, her voice getting louder and more anxious.

“He didn’t do anything.”

By this time, 20 seconds into the video, Ms. Scott is standing behind two police cars and walking closer and closer to the scene.

“He doesn’t have a gun,” Ms. Scott says. “He has a T.B.I.” — an abbreviation for the traumatic brain injury the lawyers said Mr. Scott sustained in a motorcycle accident in November 2015. “He’s not going to do anything to you guys. He just took his medicine.”

“Drop the gun,” an officer screams as the wife tries to explain her husband’s condition. “Let me get a fucking baton over here.”

“Keith don’t let them break the windows. Come up out the car,” Ms. Scott says, as the video shows an officer approaching Mr. Scott’s vehicle.

“Drop the gun,” an officer shouts again.

“Keith, don’t do it,” Ms. Scott shouts, as the video shows her backing away a bit and panning to the ground. “Keith, get out of the car. Keith, Keith. Don’t you do it. Don’t you do it, Keith.”

Mr. Bamberg said that Ms. Scott was trying, in those statements, to “get him to stand still” after he eventually got out of the car.

Fifty seconds into the video, gunshots ring out.

“Did you shoot him? Did you shoot him?” Ms. Scott shouts, her voice getting louder with each second. “Did you shoot him? He better not be fucking dead. He better not be fucking dead. I know that fucking much. I know that much. He better not be dead.”

The video then shows Mr. Scott laying on the ground with officers around him.

“I’m not going to come here. I’m going to record, though,” Ms. Scott said. “I’m not coming near you.
I’m going to record, though. He better be alive because — he better be alive.”

Mr. Bamberg said of the video: “Right now we don’t have enough facts to say whether this shooting was justified or unjustified. That’s what we’re trying to find out.

“One reason why this video is being released,” he said, “is we wanted to give the city and Police

Department the opportunity to do the right thing and release the videos they have available that clarify the situation a bit, and could potentially answer some of the outstanding questions.”

\Chief Kerr Putney of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police has brushed aside demands by activists, community leaders and the news media to make the police videos public. “We release it when we believe there is a compelling reason,” he said.

The chief said that eyewitness accounts and other evidence suggested that Mr. Scott had been holding a pistol when he was shot, and that a weapon had been found at the scene. But, he also said the police videos may leave more questions.

“
The video does not give me absolute, definitive visual evidence that would confirm that a person is pointing a gun,” Mr. Putney said.

Until they viewed the police videos on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Scott’s relatives had said they were uncertain whether they should be released to the public, according to Mr. Bamberg.

While the family members differed with the police on some major points about the videos, they seemed to be in agreement with Chief Putney on one aspect. “It is impossible to discern from the videos what, if anything, Mr. Scott is holding in his hands,” they said in a statement.

Mr. Bamberg and Mr. Curry reiterated this point in an interview Friday.

They also described the two police videos — one a dash-cam video and the other a body-camera video — that the police allowed the lawyers and family members to view this week. The body-camera video, Mr. Bamberg said, provides few significant details of the shooting. But he said the dash-cam video showed two officers taking up positions behind a pickup truck and yelling commands at Mr. Scott, who was inside his vehicle at the time.

The video, the lawyers said, appeared to show that the driver’s-side front window was rolled up.

The video, Mr. Bamberg said, then shows Mr. Scott stepping out of the vehicle, his hands by his sides, with his right hand empty and “some type of object” in his left hand. “It’s impossible to make out what it is,” the lawyer said.

“He doesn’t make any dramatic movements,” Mr. Bamberg said. He also said Mr. Scott seemed “confused.”

Mr. Scott takes a couple of steps forward “in a nonaggressive manner,” the lawyer said, and then a step back. Then shots are fired.

In other developments, police officials said Friday that they had arrested a man in the shooting death Wednesday night of a man at a demonstration protesting Mr. Scott’s death. Chief Putney said officers had arrested Rayquan Borum and charged him in the death of Justin Carr, who was fatally shot near the Omni Hotel as demonstrators marched through the streets.

“We have already established probable cause and made that arrest,” Chief Putney said, adding that the investigation was continuing.

At a news conference on Friday, Charlotte officials repeatedly said that the police videos should not be released without a full report.

“If I were to put it out indiscriminately, and it doesn’t give you good context, it can inflame the situation and make it even worse,” Chief Putney said. “It will exacerbate the backlash. It will increase the distrust. So that is where discernment, judgment and reasonableness have to come in.”

But pressure continued to mount on the city, and the state’s attorney general, Roy Cooper, soon after called for the police videos to be released.

“We must continue in the pursuit of truth while also continuing the important work of bringing our communities and law enforcement together to build trust and safety for all,” said Mr. Cooper, who is also the Democratic nominee for governor. “One step toward meeting both goals is for the videos in this case to be released to the public.”

In an interview that aired Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” President Obama spoke in general terms about the national debate over police conduct.

“I think it’s important to separate out the pervasive sense of frustration among a lot of African-Americans about shootings of people, and the sense that justice is not always colorblind,” Mr. Obama said.

The president cautioned, however, that illegal behavior during protests was “not going to advance the cause.”

“In Charlotte,” he said, “my hope is that in the days to come, that people in the community pull together and say, ‘How do we do this the right way?’”

———

Following is a transcript of the video:

OFFICER: Hands up!

RAKEYIA SCOTT: Don’t shoot him. Don’t shoot him. He has no weapon. He has no weapon. Don’t shoot him.

OFFICER: Don’t shoot. Drop the gun. Drop the fucking gun.

RAKEYIA SCOTT: Don’t shoot him. Don’t shoot him.

OFFICER: Drop the gun.

RAKEYIA SCOTT: He didn’t do anything.

OFFICER: Drop the gun. Drop the gun.

RAKEYIA SCOTT: He doesn’t have a gun. He has a T.B.I. (Traumatic Brain Injury).

OFFICER: Drop the gun.

RAKEYIA SCOTT: He is not going to do anything to you guys.

RAKEYIA SCOTT: He just took his medicine.

\OFFICER: Drop the gun. Let me get a fucking baton over here. [muffled]

RAKEYIA SCOTT: Keith, don’t let them break the windows. Come on out the car.

OFFICER: [muffled]

OFFICER:Drop the gun.

RAKEYIA SCOTT: Keith! Don’t you do it.

OFFICER: Drop the gun.

RAKEYIA SCOTT: Keith, get out the car. Keith! Keith! Don’t you do it! Don’t you do it! Keith!

OFFICER: Drop the gun.

RAKEYIA SCOTT:Keith! Keith! Keith! Don’t you do it! [SHOTS]

RAKEYIA SCOTT: Fuck. Did you shoot him? Did you shoot him? Did you shoot him? He better not be fucking dead.He better not be fucking dead. I know that fucking much. I know that much. He better not be dead. I’m not going to come near you. I’m going to record, though. I’m not coming near you. I’m going to record, though.He better be alive because ...I come You better be alive. How about that?Yes, we here, over here at 50 ... 50 ...9453 Lexington Court. These are the police officers that shot my husband, and he better live. He better live. Because he didn’t do nothing to them.

OFFICER: Is everybody good? Are you good?

RAKEYIA SCOTT: He good. Nobody ... touch nobody, so they’re all good.

OFFICER: You good?

RAKEYIA SCOTT: I know he better live. I know he better live. How about that I’m not coming to you guys, but he’d better live. He better live. You all hear it, you see this, right? He better live.

OFFICER: [muffled]

RAKEYIA SCOTT: He better live. I swear, he better live. Yep, he better live. He better fucking live. He better live. Where is...He better fucking live, and I can’t even leave the damn...I ain’t going nowhere. I’m staying in the same damn spot. What the fuck. That’s O.K. did you all call the police? I mean, did you all call an ambulance?

NYT