A Black family in North Carolina is demanding that police in Elizabeth City, North Carolina release body camera footage of an encounter that left one of their relatives dead.
The Associated Press, via the Guardian, reports that the family of 42-year-old Andrew Brown is vowing to hold police accountable after he was fatally shot by a police deputy earlier this week.
Police say that the officer who shot Brown was executing a search warrant on Brown's car at the time the shooting occurred. One eyewitness has claimed that Brown started driving away from the deputy when they opened fire on him.
The AP has found that "court records show Brown had a history of criminal charges stretching back into the 1990s, including a misdemeanor drug possession conviction and some pending felony drug charges."
However, police so far have declined to explain the nature of the warrant the deputy was executing, and have given no time table for when they are going to release body camera footage of the incident.
"We're waiting for the bodycam footage because we really just don't know what happened," Brown's cousin, Hampton, told the AP. "But if this is a case where he was killed, running away, unarmed, then we absolutely are going to pursue justice in whatever capacity that can be."
