Two black people shot dead by US police as inquiry begins into systemic racism

A demonstrator in Boston, Massachusetts, after the George Floyd verdict. Reuters

Rich Mackay

April 22 2021 09:17 AM

North Carolina state officials have opened an investigation into the fatal shooting of a black man in his car by local sheriff's deputies serving him with a search warrant.

It was the second killing of a black person by police as Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the murder of black man George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The shooting unfolded on Wednesday morning in Elizabeth City, a riverfront town of about 18,000 residents in Pasquotank County near North Carolina's coastal border with Virginia, and small groups of protesters took to the streets by evening.

The county sheriff's office and the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), which said it had taken over the case, each provided few details of the fatal encounter.

Authorities identified the man who was slain as Andrew Brown Jr., a resident of Elizabeth City, and said only that he was shot when sheriff's deputies tried to serve him with a search warrant at about 840am.

Relatives described him to the Raleigh News & Observer and other media outlets as a 40-year-old father and an African American.

Law enforcement officials did not say whether Brown was armed at the time or whether he was considered a threat to the officers. The nature of the warrant was not disclosed.

The shooting came the day after a jury found Derek Chauvin, a white former Minneapolis police officer, guilty of murdering George Floyd last year by kneeling on his neck while he was handcuffed and under arrest.

Just as the guilty verdict was about to be read in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, police in Ohio shot and killed a Black teenager in broad daylight during a confrontation.

The shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, who was swinging a knife during a fight with another person in Columbus, although relatives said it was Bryant herself who called police.

In the wake of the Chauvin verdict, the US Department of Justice announced it has now opened an investigation into whether there was systemic racism at work among police in Minneapolis.