"Don't Shoot Him": Wife's Cellphone Video of Fatal Police Shooting Released

October 3, 2020News

Disturbing cellphone footage of the fatal police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, the 43-year-old black man whose death earlier this week in Charlotte, North Carolina, sparked days of protest, was just released by NBC.

The video was taken by Scott’s wife, Rakeyia Scott, who can be heard pleading with police not to shoot her husband. She repeatedly tells the officers that Scott has a traumatic brain injury and that he is unarmed, growing increasingly distraught, before multiple shots ring out.

“He doesn’t have a gun, he has a [traumatic brain injury], he’s not going to do anything to you guys, he just took his medicine,” Scott’s wife pleads.

Watch the video (which is graphic and may be disturbing) here:

NBC described the scene:

At this point, it is “unclear whether she is telling him not to get out of the vehicle he’s in,” as the Huffington Post writes.

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT

Click Here: Golf special

After the shots, Scott’s wife screams, “Did you shoot him?’

Scott’s family has repeatedly asserted that Scott was unarmed and reading a book in his car while waiting for his son to come home from school before he was shot. Police in Charlotte claim that Scott was armed and “posed an immediate threat” before he was shot and killed, which Scott’s family disputes.

Rakeyia Scott’s video has provoked further questions on that point, as The Intercept notes:

Protesters had been demanding the police release footage of Scott’s death for days, but the police have refused, as Common Dreams reported. The family has viewed the police footage of Scott’s shooting and said it left them with “more questions than answers.”