A man who was injured during demonstrations in Charlotte died on Thursday, as protesters and police prepared to face off for a third night.
Protesters were demonstrating over the death of Keith Scott on Tuesday. Police shot Scott in the parking lot of the apartment complex where he lived on the east side of town.
Details of what happened to the protester have been muddled, with conflicting explanations from city officials. At first the city’s police chief, Kerr Putney, said the man had died on Wednesday night. That announcement was initially reversed.
The city also said the man, whose name has not been released, was injured during a “civilian on civilian” shooting at an intersection. On Thursday afternoon, that explanation seemed increasingly tenuous.
“There was no fight,” said Eddie Thomas, an attorney and Charlotte public defender who was at the intersection in question to observe interactions between police and the public, he said. “There was no issue between protesters. It just didn’t happen.”
By Wednesday, the protests had migrated to the city’s center, to a neighborhood called Uptown that features upscale shops and restaurants. The demonstrations began peacefully, Thomas said, but turned quickly when police in riot gear arrived.
“When it was the bicycle police everything was fine,” he said. “I have no idea why they came out with riot gear. Within five minutes everything had escalated.”
He said protesters tried to enter the lobby of the Omni hotel, which had locked its doors. Protesters were shaking the glass doors when police fired off several rounds of tear gas.
“There were a lot of us out there who know the difference between a gunshot and a gas canister,” Thomas said. He examined the injured man, he said. The man was lying on the sidewalk, blood pouring from the back of his head. Thomas said he saw no entry wound in the front.
Thomas’s estimation of what happened is that the protester was shot by a so-called “less lethal” round, a gas canister, pepper ball or some other projectile that caused him to stumble back and hit his head on the brick sidewalk.
That account agrees with what other witnesses claimed to have seen.
“I saw the police shoot that man almost point blank with my own eyes,” Jimmy James Tyson wrote on Facebook. “Police shot him close range in the side of the head with a rubber bullet.”
Authorities were bringing in outside help to prepare for any further demonstrations on Thursday night. Governor Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency and began bringing in national guard troops. The chief state prosecutor, Andrew Murray, asked the state bureau of investigation to help examine Scott’s shooting.
Police planned to show video footage to Scott’s family but had no plans to reveal it to the public.
Putney told a news conference that the video showed Scott, 43, was holding a gun and not a book, as the family has claimed.
“I can tell you we did not find a book,” he said. But, he added, the film did not clearly show Scott pointing the gun at anyone.
Later Putney changed his message again, saying on CNN that on the video he could not see Scott’s hands at all.
