Police arrest man in shooting death of Charlotte protester

Charlotte, N.C. police have arrested someone in the killing of a man who was protesting the death of Keith Lamont Scott.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police chief Kerr Putney announced on Friday that they’ve taken Rayquan Borum into custody for the shooting death of Justin Carr.

Carr, 26, died on Thursday, the day after getting shot while he was immersed in a crowd of protesters in downtown Charlotte.

Photos of Carr after he was wounded show him lying on the pavement with a bloody gash to his head on Wednesday night. Protesters and police rushed him to the hospital, where he was put on life support until his death the following day.

Police said from the beginning that Carr was wounded as a result of “civilian-on-civilian” violence, but eyewitnesses disputed this, saying that the protester dropped to the ground immediately after officers fired rubber bullets into the crowd.

“I saw a lot of circumstantial evidence that the (police) did this,” public defender Eddie Thomas, 31, told the Daily News the morning after witnessing Carr get shot.“The fact that he went down after the loud bang from the CMPD and the reaction from the crowd.”

Carr’s death is the only fatality so far during the three nights of protests in Charlotte following the police-involved shooting of Scott, a 43-year-old father of seven.
Scott, who is black, was fatally shot by Charlotte-Mecklenburg officer Brentley Vinson on Tuesday afternoon.

Police said that Scott was brandishing a firearm and would not drop it before they shot him.

Family and witnesses say that Scott is disabled and was reading a book while waiting for his son to get off the school bus when he was shot.

Scott’s family, the ACLU and the local NAACP have demanded the release of a police video that captured the shooting.

Putney let Scott’s family view the video but said he would not release it publicly pending an investigation, which has been handed over to the State Bureau of Investigations.