Full update: A young(?) black man was murdered by police in my neighborhood tonight.
I live in the Beaties Ford neighborhood of Charlotte. It’s not a bad neighborhood. There’s never very much crime or anything going on, but it’s mainly lower-income minorities who live here, most black and latin@.
At about 11:15pm, I left my house to go pick up my brother from work. Neighborhood was completely and quiet and empty at that point.
I picked him up and we came home. On the highway, I saw the two helicopters circling in the sky with their search lights on. I told Corbin (my little brother) that I had a bad feeling about it, because even though I was almost sure I was imagining it, it seemed like the helicopters were circling right above where our house is. As we got off the highway, it became more and more and apparent that the helicopter actually was literally above/around our house. I was freaked out, because I didn’t know what was going on.
When I turned down my street, there were maybe ten police cars. The whole thing was blocked off and I heard lots of yelling and crying. I figured they were searching for someone who committed a murder, so I decided to go someplace else for awhile.
We came back after about a half hour and parked our car down the street. Most of the neighborhood was out by this time, so we got out too and started trying to figure out what was going on.
First, we heard someone had been shot. This was my first thought anyway. I was kind of shaken up by the fact that I had literally missed being in the area of the shooting by about ten minutes. Then, the chatter we heard was that it was the police who shot someone. Still, I assumed they’d shot the perp they were looking for.
Some lady walked past us and said “yall look scared.” We asked her if she knew what happened. That’s when she told us that the kid was being chased by some people and the police were called to help him. Somehow, the police ended up shooting the kid. The police shot the victim when they were called to help him.
That’s when I first heard the brother yelling at the police. He was saying that they shot his brother and that his brother didn’t have a gun.The police shot him even though he was unarmed. That’s when the coroner’s truck showed up (I think) and I decided to blog it so I could keep up with what was happening. This is also when more of the kid’s family showed up. I’m assuming the kid was a teen because his older brother only looked about mid twenties. His mother was screaming and crying at this point, as well as a younger cousin of his. It was heartbreaking.
His brother had a gun at one point. That’s when Corbin and I went back to our car. The chatter was getting louder though so we got out again and got closer to where we could see the crime scene. I saw them load the body.
I was approached by two or three detectives who asked if I lived in the house I was standing in front of at the time. That’s when I told them where I lived and asked if we could get to our house. The brother came up to the detectives and started yelling about how “you’re not gonna get away with this” and “he was handcuffed when you shot him.”
“We’re not going to let you put us in handcuffs anymore. Why would anyone let you put them in handcuffs when this is what you do? You handcuff him and shoot him in the back of the head. If you want head shots, I can give you head shots. I can put something on your head.” Detectives sent me to my car at this point and told me I could drive through and get home. As I was walking, I heard him say “one of yall cuffed him, the other said ‘he’s got a gun’ and yall shot him in the back of his head.”
When I got home, I could still hear his mother crying and screaming.
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t listen to his mother crying anymore and his brother screaming.
