ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — Each night since sheriff’s deputies killed Andrew Brown Jr., protesters have marched through this small city in northeast North Carolina. The protesters have been calling for the county to release the body camera video showing 42-year-old Brown’s final moments.
On Wednesday, a judge said the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office had to show the video to Brown’s son within 10 days, but the video doesn’t have to be released until late May or early June.
Brown’s family was allowed to see 20 seconds of video, according to lawyers for the family. But they want to see all the video and they want the footage made public.
There are a lot of unknowns about how and why Pasquotank Sheriff’s Office deputies shot and killed Brown. But here is what the media and the public do know:
Pasquotank County deputies were serving a search warrant on a home near downtown Elizabeth City on April 21 when they shot and killed Brown.
An independent autopsy, commissioned by the family, shows Brown was shot five times, with a fatal gunshot wound to the back of his head.
Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, a lawyer for the family, said the 20-second clip showed Brown backing his car out of a driveway to get away from deputies, who had their guns drawn.
“There was no time in the 20 seconds that we saw where he was threatening the officers in any kind of way,” she told reporters.
Attorneys for the family said the video appeared to show Brown with both his hands on the steering wheel as he tried to get away.
District Attorney Andrew Womble called the attorneys’ description of the video “patently false.” He said Brown hit deputies with his car twice before they shot him.
“My dad got executed just by trying to save his own life,” said Khalil Ferebee, Brown’s adult son.
"It was a kill shot to the back of the head," attorney Ben Crump told reporters this week. "He posed no threat to these officers."
A warrant shows Pasquotank County deputies, along with Dare County Sheriff’s Office deputies, were at the house as part of a drug investigation. According to the warrant, a confidential informant said he has purchased crack cocaine from Brown.
The warrant was signed by a judge the day before Brown was killed.
The family has only been allowed to see a small clip of the shooting as of Thursday. A judge ordered the county to show all the video to Brown’s adult son and an attorney within 10 days.
Hearing a motion from the county to release the videos, the judge said he could consider making the footage public between 30 and 45 days from April 28.
A coalition of media companies, including Spectrum News 1, also asked a judge to release the videos. The judge denied that motion.
State law says body camera video cannot be made public without a court order.
The judge said the county could blur or redact parts of the body camera and dash camera videos shown to Brown’s son, including the deputies’ conversations.
“The release at this time would create a serious threat to the fair, impartial and orderly administration of justice,” Judge Jeffery Foster said Wednesday.
The State Bureau of Investigations took over the investigation last week after the shooting. It is standard practice for the SBI to investigate police shootings.
“As an agency, we share the family and community’s sense of urgency to understand precisely what occurred during this incident. Our role is to pursue the truth and to ultimately share the results of our work with the prosecutor,” SBI Director Robert Schurmeier said this week.
“The family, the community, and all impacted by this event deserve no less and the SBI is fully committed to making sure that the true facts are known, no matter where those facts lead us,” he said.
The FBI has opened its own civil rights investigation into the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office.
This week, Gov. Roy Cooper called for a special prosecutor to take over the case from the district attorney.
"In the interest of justice and confidence in the judicial system, I believe a special prosecutor should handle all matters regarding the shooting in Pasquotank County," Cooper said.
"This would help assure the community and Mr. Brown’s family that a decision on pursuing criminal charges is conducted without bias," the governor said in a statement.
But that request would have to come from Womble.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said he has offered to have his office take over the case.
"A number of people have asked me to take over this prosecution. I want to clarify that under North Carolina law, the District Attorney, not the Attorney General, controls the prosecution of criminal cases," he said in a statement on Twitter.
"For my office to play a role in the prosecution, the District Attorney must request our assistance. My office has reached out to District Attorney Andrew Womble to offer that assistance, which he has acknowledged," Stein said.
Longtime North Carolina civil rights leader Rev. William Barber, who came to Elizabeth City this week to meet with pastors in the area, called for Stein to take over the case.
He called Womble “inept, incompetent and incapable” of leading the investigation and possible prosecution of the shooting.
"A warrant is not a license to kill," Barber said. "A warrant does not give someone a badge and a gun permission to be a bigot."
Protesters have been marching in Elizabeth City for seven straight nights since Brown was killed.
“Twenty seconds? Not enough,” is a frequent chant, referring to the length of the video shown to Brown’s family.
The peaceful nightly marches take over streets and intersections in the city, with police keeping their distance and blocking traffic.
There is a heavy police presence in the city, with officers from as far away as Wilmington, Burlington and Salisbury.
On Tuesday night the city began implementing a curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. but protesters made it clear that they did not plan to abide by the curfew.
The first night of the curfew, police waited until 10 p.m. to move protesters from the intersection in front of a bridge over the Pasquotank River. Dozens of officers with batons and riot gear arrested six people that night.
On the second night of the curfew, police, again armed with wooden batons and riot gear waited until about 11 p.m. to move in on the same intersection.
The media outnumbered protesters as police closed in from two sides, threatening to arrest members of the press if they did not get out of the way.
Police arrested nine protesters Thursday night, according to the Elizabeth City Police Department.
Protests will likely continue in Elizabeth City as the community prepares for Brown’s funeral and the family sees the video.
It’s not clear when the public will get to see any of the body camera footage from that morning.
Some groups are calling for larger protests over the weekend, inviting people from around the state to come to Elizabeth City for a march on Sunday.
The funeral is planned for Monday, with Rev. Al Sharpton set to give the eulogy.