Man fatally shot by North Carolina police officer during foot chase

A police officer fatally shot a man during a foot chase in Raleigh, North Carolina as he was trying to arrest him on drug charges.

|
Gerry Broome/AP
Bystanders gather for a vigil near the scene a shooting on Bragg Street in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. Authorities say that a police officer shot and killed a man while trying to make an arrest for a felony drug charge.

A police officer fatally shot a man during a foot chase as he was trying to arrest him on drug charges early Monday afternoon, the Raleigh police chief said.

In the first several hours after the shooting, local television coverage showed police forming a line in the street near the downtown neighborhood where the shooting took place as a number of people gathered behind yellow crime-scene tape that blocked off the area and began chanting "No justice, no peace!"

The chant has been used repeatedly across the nation in recent years to protest the deaths of black men following encounters with law enforcement officers.

Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown did not reveal the man's race during a news conference at City Hall. She said a firearm was found near the man's body but did not say whether it was his. She also said the man was wanted on a felony drug charge. Deck-Brown declined to provide any other details about the circumstances of the shootingpending a customary investigation by the state Bureau of Investigation.

By late afternoon, the police tape had been taken down and by evening several dozen people had gathered with candles at a makeshift memorial near where the shooting happened.

Claresa Williams said she was standing on the curb in front of her apartment when she saw an officer drive up. A man standing in front of a convenience store then began to run, she said.

"When the police came, he jumped the fence" into the backyard of a modest house next door, Williams told The Associated Press. "The officer jumped the fence, pulled his gun out and shot him down six times."

The officer didn't clear the fence cleanly, causing observers to snicker, but he never hit the ground, Wilson said.

Her view was blocked so Wilson didn't see the victim fall from bullets. "To me, you pulled your gun out and you fired at that man six times in his back because he was running," Wilson said.

Bishop Darnell Dixon, who for 20 years has served as pastor of the Bibleway Temple church about a quarter-mile from where the shooting happened, said neighborhood relations with the police have generally been good, and he believed calm would prevail.

"This is very different for this community, the actual shooting," he said. "I'm interested in knowing: Why did it escalate to this point?"

Tamekia Richardson said she saw a male police officer chasing a man into the backyard of one of the street's modest homes. The men disappeared from view, and then she heard shots.

She said she then ran down a side street away from the shooting.

Judith Lewis, a woman who described herself as a community activist who has lived in the area for years, said a lot of drug activity takes place in the neighborhood at night. She blamed it on buyers coming in from elsewhere.

"It's an open-air market," she said.

It is standard procedure to put officers involved in fatal shootings on administrative leave. Police spokesman Jim Sughrue said he couldn't confirm whether that had happened in this case.

Deck-Brown said the Raleigh Police Department's Internal Affairs unit will investigate whether any departmental policies were violated. She said she will send a report to the city manager within five working days.

___

Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed and Tom Foreman Jr. contributed to this story.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Man fatally shot by North Carolina police officer during foot chase
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2016/0229/Man-fatally-shot-by-North-Carolina-police-officer-during-foot-chase
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe