NAACP head says shooting victim's history doesn't matter
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — A restraining order filed against a North Carolina man killed by police last week shouldn't matter because officers who confronted him didn't know about that history before he was shot to death, a civil rights leader said.
Corine Mack, president of the local NAACP chapter, said blacks typically are "demonized" after being killed by police.
"I don't want to hear any of that," Mack said at a news conference Tuesday announcing demands that include implementation of police reforms approved last year.
Court documents say Keith Lamont Scott had a restraining order filed against him a year ago when he threatened to kill his wife and her son with a gun.
Keith Scott's wife filed the order Oct. 5, that law enforcement officers who encounter him should be aware that he "carries a 9mm black" gun. Police have said Scott had a handgun when they approached him at an apartment complex last week.
Officers told Scott repeatedly to drop the weapon and he was shot to death when he didn't follow their orders, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney has said.
The family of Scott, 43, has said he was not armed. Videos released by police and the family are inconclusive, and state authorities are investigating. Protests over the shooting spanned the past week, and some of those protests turned violent. Charlotte streets were mostly quiet Tuesday night for the first time since the shooting on Sept. 20.
Tuesday evening, the police headquarters building had to be evacuated as a bomb squad checked out a suspicious package. A robot removed the package from the building and police said on their Twitter page that the package was taken to a remote location to be rendered harmless.
In the restraining order last fall, Rakeyia Scott sought to keep her husband away because "he hit my 8-year-old in the head a total of three times with his fist," she said in the restraining order.
"He kicked me and threaten to kill us last night with his gun," she said in the order filed in Gaston County, where the couple then lived. "He said he is a 'killer' and we should know that."
Rakeyia Scott checked boxes on the form informing law officers who would serve the restraining order that her husband had neither a permit issued by a county sheriff to buy a handgun nor a state permit to carry a concealed handgun, which requires a criminal background check. She said he worked as a mall security guard.
When deputies went to serve the restraining order two days after it was filed, Scott had already moved to South Carolina, where he has family. About a week after that, Rakeyia Scott filed a separate court notice voluntarily dismissing the order, saying: "He is no longer a threat to me and my family."
In a video released last week capturing the moments before and after Scott was shot by police, Rakeyia Scott can be heard telling officers: "Don't shoot him! He has no weapon."
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said they found Scott's DNA and fingerprints on a handgun recovered at the scene and that he was wearing an ankle holster when he was killed.
Police released a photo of a small, black handgun they said was recovered from the scene of Scott's shooting on Sept. 20. Police have not described the gun in detail, but printing on the side of the barrel said it was a Colt Series 80 Mustang .380 caliber, which shoots a 9mm bullet, according to Steven Howard, a firearms consultant in Lansing, Michigan, who has testified as an expert witness in court cases.
It's not clear if the gun mentioned in the restraining order is the same one police said they recovered.