A Charlotte police officer tells a partner on the radio about an armed man parked nearby “rolling a joint” — minutes before a cop shot the man, Keith Lamont Scott, dead, according to recordings released Thursday.
“Roll back to this apartment complex behind you. There was a guy parked next to us rolling a joint and had a gun,” the officer in the North Carolina city is heard saying in the transmission at 3:47 p.m.
“We’re back here at the other visitor parking,” he then says to provide a more precise location about five minutes before Police Officer Brentley Vinson opened fire.
The officers pulled away, stopped nearby to put on vests identifying them as cops and then returned to confront Scott, who was sitting in his vehicle, the Charlotte Observer reported.
Thirty-seven seconds after Vinson shot four rounds, an officer notified his dispatcher about the gunfire at 3:52 p.m.
“We got shots fired!” he radioed. “One suspect down. Lexington Court.”
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police released limited radio transmissions after a public records request made by the paper the day after the shooting.
That transmission confirms the timeline given by police — that cops had seen Scott with a gun and marijuana when they were in the complex trying to serve a warrant on someone else, the paper reported.
On Saturday, Police Chief Kerr Putney released partial video taken of the fatal confrontation from a police dashboard camera and a bodycam worn by a uniformed cop.
Police said Scott was shot because he ignored commands to drop a gun, sparking days of protests and violence. Both Scott and Vinson are African-American.
Scott’s family has maintained he was reading a book and was unarmed.
His wife, Rakeyia, was heard yelling at police on her cellphone video that he suffered from a traumatic brain injury. The family’s lawyers have said he was injured in a motorcycle accident.