Just one day after the guilty verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, a Black man was fatally shot by police conducting a search of his property.
The man, identified by relatives as Andrew Brown, 40, was driving away from officers in Elizabeth City when they shot him around 8:30 a.m., according to police and local TV station WAVY.
“During the execution of the search warrant, a citizen who was subject to the search warrant was shot and fatally wounded,” the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation will take over the probe, according to the sheriff, and the city council has called an emergency meeting for Wednesday evening. The sheriff’s department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The new shooting death came only a day after former Minneapolis cop Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd.
Also Tuesday, police in Columbus, Ohio, shot and killed a black 16-year-old, Ma’Khia Bryant, who was allegedly wielding a knife.
Keith Rivers, president of the Pasquotank County NAACP, said police had not spoken to family members until he arrived and put pressure on authorities to release information.
“The sheriff needs to address these people,” he told WAVY, gesturing at a crowd that had gathered on Brown’s street. “In light of everything that’s going in America with the shooting of unarmed black men, I came down to make sure that the facts are clearly disseminated.”
He called for bodycam footage of the incident to be released immediately, though it was not yet clear if video of the incident had been taken.