RALEIGH, N.C. — Three deputies from the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office have resigned and another seven have been put on leave after the shooting of Andrew Brown Jr., media outlets reported Friday.

The reports followed news earlier in the day that Brown, the Elizabeth City man killed by sheriff’s deputies Wednesday, was shot in the back, according to emergency radio traffic from the shooting.

On Friday, the Elizabeth City council voted unanimously during an emergency meeting to try to get body camera video from the shooting released.

“We’re going into 72 hours of this thing, and still there’s no answers,” Councilman Gabriel Adkins said. “Each day that goes by, there’s more pain and more anger.”

It was sheriff’s deputies, not the city police, who shot Brown. However, the county still has not released the names of the deputies involved or details of what happened.

Some of Brown’s family attended Friday’s council meeting. Mayor Betty Parker and other officials told them that the city would do what it could to get the footage released, but the family would have the best standing to persuade a judge.

Councilman Michael Brooks said the council needed to take a stand.

“This is a national epidemic, the murder of Black men. And all we’re asking for is they release the body cam (video),” he said. “What reason would anyone have … not to show the body cam?

The Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office has said deputies were serving a warrant Wednesday when at least one deputy shot Brown, 42, whose death drew protests in the small northeastern North Carolina town and also made national news.

The shooting happened the morning after a jury in Minnesota found Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd, in a rare court loss for an officer who killed someone while on duty.

Dispatch radio recordings are public records, and the Broadcastify.com website records them in most counties, including Pasquotank. The radio traffic details of the Brown shooting were first reported Friday morning by WRAL-TV. Authorities have released few other details, citing an ongoing probe by the State Bureau of Investigation into the incident.

According to scanner traffic recorded the morning of the shooting, law enforcement told dispatch that shots were fired after responding to Brown’s address on Perry Street shortly before 8:30 a.m.

“We do have a subject that was hit,” a voice on the radio tells dispatch at about 8:25 a.m.

About a minute later, someone on the scene provided the first details of the shooting victim.

“Be advised. EMS has got one male 42 years of age. Gunshot to the back. We do have a viable pulse at this time.”

Shortly after, another caller repeated the male victim “had gunshot wounds to the back.”

Other emerging details of the shooting – like a report of at least 14 shots fired – have been reported by neighbors but not commented on by the sheriff’s office.

Pasquotank Sheriff Tommy Wooten held a news conference Wednesday afternoon. He told reporters there is body camera footage of the shooting, but that he hadn’t watched it so he couldn’t comment on whether the shooting was justified.

In a followup video his office posted Thursday, Wooten said he “will not prejudge anything or draw any conclusions until we have all the facts” surrounding the shooting.

“I will say if evidence shows that any of my deputies violated the law, or our policies, they will be held accountable,” Wooten added.

Wooten’s chief deputy, Daniel Fogg, said in the video that because Brown was accused of a felony and had a prior record, “our training and our policies indicate, under such circumstances, there is a high risk of danger.”

Brown most recently got of prison in 2018 after serving a year and four months on drug charges, according to the N.C. Department of Public Safety. He completed his parole in 2019.

Brown also did not appear to have a history of violence, according to his criminal record, except for a misdemeanor assault from over 20 years ago.

Multiple media organizations plan to go to court to seek the release of the body cam footage of the shooting. North Carolina law says only a judge can decide if such footage should be made public. Even if law enforcement or elected officials want to make it public, they can’t without a judge’s approval.

On Friday a White House reporter for McClatchy, which owns The News & Observer, asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki if President Biden knew about the shooting and had any opinion on releasing the video footage.

Psaki said Biden was following the story, which she called a tragedy, but that she hadn’t talked to him about the body cam footage issue.

 

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