Body cam video reveals gunfire and screams before man was shot, killed by CMPD officer
Repeated shots and a woman’s screams can be heard as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officers approached and entered an apartment where police say a man stabbed an officer before being fatally shot by police, body cam video shows.
On Aug. 20, police responded to a domestic violence call at The Penrose in South End. There, police and Peter Corey got into an altercation that ended with an officer shooting and killing him.
The police department released multiple videos of the situation on Thursday.
One video shows an officer struggling with Corey in the apartment as a woman screams, “Please don’t kill him. He’s paranoid. He’s delusional.”
In a video statement released at the time on X, formerly known as Twitter, CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings said officers heard a shot fired inside an apartment at The Penrose after they arrived, and forced their way inside.
Once inside, officers struggled physically with Corey, body cam footage shows.
“During the struggle, the subject was able to obtain a knife,” Jennings said.
What the body cam footage shows
At least 10 shots can be heard as officers and medics stood outside the apartment door, the body cam footage reveals.
Once officers heard gunshots, they kicked down the door to the apartment and entered. As Officer Shawn McMichael enters a bedroom, where Corey and a woman are fighting, Corey is seen going after McMichael, who says he’d been stabbed in the neck. The video goes black as more gunshots are heard with an officer saying, “I shot him.”
In one video, Corey can be seen lying on a bedroom floor with several knives in the room. One officer points to a knife on a table and says it was “the knife that was used on the other officer.”
In another video released Thursday, McMichael and the woman are seen being tended to by medics in the hallway outside of the apartment where Corey was shot.
A medic can be seen and heard describing the wounds of McMichael and the woman, saying one of them has stab wounds in the neck, the other has a gunshot wound to the arm. As McMichael is taken from the apartment building on a stretcher, blood can be seen on his face and neck.
Moments after the fatal shooting, a video shows seven CMPD officers entering the apartment building and running up a stairwell to the third-floor apartment.
“We have no pulse,” an officer already in the apartment tells one of the arriving officers referring to Corey.
In another video, referring to McMichael, an officer tells an arriving officer, “He’s OK. Now they’re compressing the wound. They’re taking him to the hospital.”
What CMPD said
In Thursday’s news release, police said officers saw Corey holding a gun and gave repeated commands for him to drop the firearm.
The gun fell from Corey’s hand, and officers “moved to separate” him from the gun on the ground, police said.
A struggle followed, and Corey stabbed McMichael in his head and neck area, according to the CMPD release. McMichael suffered serious but non-life threatening injuries, police said.
During the encounter, Officer Tyler Bourque “perceived a deadly threat” and shot Corey, CMPD said. MEDIC rendered emergency aid at the scene to Corey and McMichael, police said.
The woman whose screams can be heard in the video suffered a gunshot wound before officers arrived and was hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries, according to a CMPD news release on Thursday.
Multiple firearms and knives were recovered from the apartment, police said.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is the lead agency investigating the incident.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This story was originally published December 7, 2023 at 1:32 PM.