Autopsy shows ‘kill shot’ to Brown, attorney says. Ministers declare ‘moral emergency.’
Attorneys for the family of Andrew Brown Jr., at an emotional Tuesday news conference in Elizabeth City, said a private autopsy showed that he died when Pasquotank County sheriff’s deputies fired a “kill shot to the back of the head.”
Brown, 42, was killed in his car outside his home in Elizabeth City last Wednesday as deputies were serving search and arrest warrants related to felony drug charges.
After hearing the autopsy results, Brown’s son Khalil Ferebee discouraged violence Tuesday as he addressed the crowd of about 100 people that stood outside the public safety building downtown.
“To my pops … yesterday, I said he was executed,” Ferebee said. “This autopsy report showed me that was correct.”
The autopsy also showed an additional four gunshot wounds to Brown’s arm.
“That wasn’t enough?” Ferebee said. “They’re going to shoot him in the back of the head? ... That’s not right at all.
“Man, stuff gotta change. It’s really gotta change for real.”
The press conference drew angry shouts from spectators, especially when mothers of other police violence victims spoke.
“All Black men are not terrorists,” said Tamika Thatch of High Point, whose son was killed in a church in November.
Motioning to Brown’s son, she said, “If his daddy killed them, he would never walk the streets again. We need to hold them to the same accountability. They need to be locked up today. Yesterday. Last week.”
Elizabeth City officials on Tuesday announced an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew in the town starting Tuesday night.
About 200 protesters marched and chanted Tuesday evening. Most left before the curfew began. But about two dozen engaged in a standoff with police officers in riot gear at about 10 p.m.
Members of the New Black Panther party from Washington, D.C., stood in the parking lot for the news conference and called Brown’s death an “assassination” and sought the immediate release of footage.
As attorney Ben Crump spoke, some members called him a “boot-licking ambulance chaser,” insisting the streets would get justice.
And while Ferebee urged against violence, attorney Bakari Sellers said calls for peace are not the family’s responsibility.
“If we want calm, if we want justice,” Sellers said, “that onus is not on family. That onus is on people who are hiding information.”
A call to action from ministers
The Rev. William Barber II made a brief appearance in Elizabeth City on Monday and was careful not to take the spotlight from the family, its legal team and the discussion about the video.
On Tuesday afternoon, Barber was in his own element, at a lectern at a church flanked by dozens of other pastors. He used the moment to address bigger issues raised by Brown’s killing.
Barber called for North Carolina Attorney General to take over the case, calling local authorities “inept, incompetent and incapable.”
Barber, local pastors, attorneys and NAACP leaders met privately Tuesday afternoon at Mount Lebanon AME Zion Church to declare a “moral emergency” in the country following Brown’s killing.
“These are not the days in the South when we put up with law officials and DAs that are inept, incompetent and incapable,” Barber said at the news conference, repeating the three words to a chorus of church leaders. “Inept! Incompetent! And incapable! Because of that, babies are crying.”
Barber said he and the other pastors gathered in Elizabeth City will march to the scene of Brown’s death Wednesday.
“A warrant is not a license to kill,” he said. “No police have the right to carry out an execution. A warrant does not give someone with a badge and a gun to be a bigot.”
The Rev. T. Anthony Spearman, president of the North Carolina NAACP, said District Attorney Andrew Womble will not return the group’s calls.
He accused him of “manipulating the chess board of white supremacy” and reminded voters to remember come election time. Womble is running for Superior Court judge.
A private autopsy report
Sellers said the family arranged an independent autopsy “because the medical report we got just said, ‘shot to the head,’ and we wanted to make sure that it was clearly denoted that he was shot in the back of the head.”
Attorneys Wayne Kendall and Crump described the details of the autopsy report with diagrams showing five bullet wounds, with the fatal shot killing Brown within minutes, they said. It caused him to lose control of his vehicle and crash into a tree, they said.
The bullet went into the base of his neck and “perforated and penetrated his skill and his brain,” Crump said.
The state’s official death certificate for Brown, which was filed Tuesday, also said the cause of death is “penetrating gunshot wound of the head” and that he died in minutes.
Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, an Elizabeth City attorney who has worked with the family, said it was “an assassination of this unarmed black man.”
“That is painful,” Lassiter said. “We are tired. Mothers are tired. Sisters are tired. Fathers are tired. Communities are tired.”
She said people need to hear that pain and not tune it out and “justice will be served.”
Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who was killed by a New York Police Department officer, stood at the podium in solidarity with Brown’s family. She said they’ve joined a club that no one wants to be part of.
“Don’t only have sympathy, have empathy. Put yourself in that position,” Carr said. “What would you do if you saw your child, your mother, your father, whomever being executed.”
Carr said she knows what this family is going through because she had to watch her son’s killing over and over again. She said police kill Black and Brown men in their communities and then “it’s swept under the rug.”
“It’s horrible what they do to us,” Carr said. “And it has to stop.”
Also Tuesday, the FBI said that it has opened a federal civil rights investigation into Brown’s death. The FBI will work with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina and the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice.
“As this is an ongoing investigation, we cannot comment further,” FBI spokeswoman Shelley Lynch said.
When asked for comment on the FBI opening a civil rights investigation, Barber said, “Amen. That’s enough comment. So be it. A man is dead! Shot in the back! On camera!”
And North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper called Tuesday for a federal prosecutor to investigate.
A court hearing for body-cam footage
Lassiter was allowed to view a 20-second snippet of the video on Monday with Brown’s son Ferebee and Ferebee’s mother, Mia Ferebee. Lassiter said the video showed Brown was shot multiple times while he sat in his vehicle with his hands on the steering wheel, calling it “an execution.”
Lassiter said she watched the video more than 10 times, taking notes.
“I didn’t sleep very well last night,” she said Tuesday. “I had nightmares. The images from that video stayed with me.”
Though the family has seen the 20 seconds of body-worn camera footage, it has not been released publicly, despite pressure from lawmakers and civil rights leaders. Law enforcement agencies cannot release officers’ body camera footage, so it’s up to a judge in this case, per North Carolina law.
There is a hearing scheduled for Wednesday morning at the Pasquotank County Courthouse regarding a petition for the release of the footage.
Lassiter said the family’s legal team believes that detectives had been observing Brown for a year, in part through the use of a camera mounted to a pole near his house.
Attorneys have said officials should release footage from that camera in addition to officers’ body cameras and a dash camera in a police van.
In addition to the body-cam footage, Elizabeth City shared a city-owned video Tuesday that shows several deputies in tactical gear arriving at Brown’s home in the back of a pickup truck. It was first obtained by WAVY News 10 through a public record request.
The camera, which is mounted on a utility pole along Brown’s street, captures the moments before Brown was shot and killed.
The black pickup truck turns towards the driveway and deputies jump out of the truck bed, yelling “Get your hands up!” the video shows.
Attorneys for Brown’s family said in a statement that the video shows what they suspected.
“Andrew Brown Jr. was brought down by an inflamed modern-day lynch mob,” the statement said. “The footage shows an eerie resemblance to what we saw in Ahmaud Arbery’s modern-day lynching, except these were no vigilantes — these murderers were on the clock as law enforcement.”
They said once the body camera footage is released, they hope they will be able hold the officers responsible for Brown’s death accountable.
“The longer law enforcement waits to release the body camera footage to the Brown family and the public, the more our suspicions are raised,” they said. “This leaked footage hints as to why.”
‘Release the tape! The real tape’
About 200 protesters took to downtown streets Tuesday evening, chanting “No charges, no peace!”
Mothers pushed strollers and toddlers carried signs tall enough to cover their faces. Neighbors waved from porches, pumping fists.
“Release the tape! The real tape! The whole tape!”
The protesters marched to the middle of U.S. 17 business, blocking it for about 20 minutes. Some suggested heading to the Elizabeth City mayor’s house, but others objected saying it would be seen as threatening.
“Let’s stay focused,” protesters yelled. “Say his name!”
As the 8 p.m. curfew neared, people blocked the U.S. 158 bridge over the Pasquotank River.
“(Expletive) your curfew!” dozens yelled as officers broadcast a warning.
“Curfew? What curfew? Whose streets? Our streets!”
“If somebody gets locked up, we’re going to bail you out for free,” said Raleigh activist Kerwin Pittman, who was in Elizabeth City. He noted a community fund.
Some protesters remained after 8 p.m., including the Rev. Curtis Gatewood, who said, “You keep killing us, you’re shooting us in the back of the head, and you’re telling us we can’t even assemble? They’re the ones who need to be off the streets!”
At 10 p.m., police in riot gear threatened the protesters without tear gas if they didn’t clear the streets.
Protesters have been marching in Elizabeth City nightly since Brown’s shooting, sometimes for hours, always with distanced police escorts.
Lassiter said Tuesday that despite the occasional business in town that has boarded up its windows this week, the marches and protests have been peaceful.
“That’s how you know, if something happens, if there is violence, it’s not us,” Lassiter said.
Elizabeth City remains in a state of emergency, which was declared in anticipation of protests surrounding the body-cam footage.
Around noon Tuesday, word about the curfew had reached Kirk Rivers, who has been among the community leaders of the protests in town. Rivers’ brother Keith is the local chapter president of the NAACP.
“The city officials have to do what they feel is the best interest of the city,” Kirk Rivers said. “And we the people have to do what’s in the best interest of the city. And so right now we’re in — we feel that the protests have been very effective, in terms of first of all making sure that we’ve sent direct actions on what we’ve been requesting.”
During the nightly protests, Kirk Rivers, 48, often plays a vocal role — directing marchers and reminding them of their purpose to gather in the streets. At the forefront, that purpose has been to pressure authorities to release the complete police footage of Brown’s killing. In another way, though, the purpose has to been to place a brighter spotlight on police killings of Black people throughout the nation.
“We’re glad that the media has come in,” Rivers said after Tuesday’s media conference. “Because it brings attention to what has taken place here, that could have taken place any place. This could have been in Seattle, Washington; Murphy, North Carolina.
“But wherever it takes it place, it’s an injustice for all, this whole country.”
Seven Pasquotank County sheriff’s deputies were placed on leave following Brown’s death. And three others resigned, but a spokesperson has said the resignations weren’t linked to the shooting.
Officials have not publicly released the names or the race of the deputies who shot Brown.
This story was originally published April 27, 2021 at 11:27 AM with the headline "Autopsy shows ‘kill shot’ to Brown, attorney says. Ministers declare ‘moral emergency.’."
