Police Shooting Leads to Tension, Protests in North Carolina

Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown said officers responded to a 911 call Tuesday evening reporting a man with a gun near a shopping center in eastern Raleigh. She said arriving officers spotted a person matching the caller's description, later identified as 26-year-old Javier Torres.

Torres ran and was chased by officers who repeatedly ordered him to stop and drop the gun, Deck-Brown said. The chief said Torres was shot in the abdomen by an officer who had joined the chase because the suspect was running directly toward that officer and would not drop his gun. He was transported to a nearby hospital. The extent of Torres' injuries was not immediately known.

A handgun, as described by the 911 caller, was located at the scene of the shooting, police said. No officers were injured.

Deck-Brown said the officer who fired the fatal shot was wearing a body camera, as were others at the scene. She said the department was asking a judge to publicly release the footage to show what happened. State law requires a court's sign-off for the release of police video. The State Bureau of Investigation is also probing the shooting.

Deck-Brown addressed reporters at an early-morning news conference, saying she wanted to “address some misinformation that is circulating on social media” about Torres' age and the circumstances of the shooting.

“The body-worn camera footage will show that some of those statements were inaccurate,” she said, adding: “As a result of the reckless and false information that has been spread on social media, a number of spontaneous protests occurred during the night which resulted in minor damage to property in and around the downtown area.”

Footage from news outlets showed that a large crowd gathered and began street protests that continued into early Wednesday, moving to the police chief's home, where people demanded she come outside, and the governor's mansion, where a US flag was taken and later burned in the street. WRAL-TV footage showed a flag burning in the street near the governor's mansion and an empty flagpole in front of the residence.

“Whose streets? Our Streets!” demonstrators chanted, as lines of protesters and police faced off in places around the state capital.

Community activist Kerwin Pittman said he spoke to witnesses after the shooting, and they told him Torres was unarmed, something the police chief later denied. Similar witness accounts saying the suspect also appeared to be a teenager had circulated on social media.

“Witnesses say Javier Torres did not have a gun. They say he was carrying a pizza box,” Pittman told The AP by phone early Wednesday morning.

“The city is fed up," Pittman said. “We feel there is always something happening with the Raleigh Police Department. We feel like they are brutalizing us," he added.

He said the protests would continue in a community that has long sought police transparency but faced an uphill battle.

Rolanda Byrd, whose 24-year-old son, Akiel Denkins was shot by Raleigh police while running from an officer in 2016, said before the police chief's news conference that she should come out to meet with protesters: “She needs to be out here to support her black community, right now, tonight."

News outlets report that this shooting happened in the same shopping center where Soheil Antonio Mojarrad, 30, was fatally shot in April 2019 by police who said he was wielding a knife. In that case the officer was wearing a body camera but it was not activated. According to an autopsy, Mojarrad was shot six times. The Wake County District attorney declined to pursue criminal charges against the Raleigh police officer in that case.