Autopsy confirms Elizabeth City man was killed by shot to back of head from deputies

Andrew Brown Jr., 42, was shot and killed on April 21 by deputies trying to arrest him on drug charges and serve a warrant to search his Elizabeth City home and car. Brown was trying to drive away when he was shot.

District Attorney Andrew Womble has cleared the three deputies who fired their weapons during the encounter of any wrongdoing, saying the shooting was justified because Brown used his car as a deadly weapon and put their lives in danger.

Although a private autopsy obtained by Brown's family indicated that he had suffered five gunshot wounds, family attorney Bakari Sellers said it's not inconsistent with the official autopsy, which cited only the wound to the back of the head and a second gunshot wound to the right arm. The official autopsy also notes "multiple incised wounds" on Brown's arm.

"What you see on the state autopsy is that there are traumatic injuries that did not contribute to his death," Sellers said. "Those wounds were suffered during that incident. He didn't have an arm full of wounds prior to that incident, and although those wounds may not have contributed to his death, he was still shot."

The autopsy's findings that both of the bullets that hit Brown came from behind only reinforce the family's claim that the shooting wasn't justified, Sellers said.

"We've always stated that he posed no threat, that he was driving away," he said. "He could have driven in the direction of law enforcement. He did not; he drove away from them. But even if you say at one point he was a threat, the threat was no more when he was beyond them."

The autopsy also noted that Brown had a small amount of methamphetamine in his system when he was killed.

"After discussion with the chief toxicologist at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the reported level of methamphetamine is low and likely did not play a role in Mr. Brown’s cause or manner of death," the report states.

That finding contradicts Womble's contention that Brown was high on drugs when deputies tried to arrest him that morning, Sellers said.

"For the district attorney to attempt to portray him as this having something to do with his death, we thought was very disingenuous and disrespectful on his part," Sellers said.

Meanwhile, Brown's family has dropped its court fight to obtain all of the video of the shooting recorded by the deputies' body-worn and dashboard cameras.

Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Foster allowed Brown's family to see about 19 minutes of the more than two hours of video of the incident recorded by four body-worn cameras and one dashboard camera.

Family members and their attorneys have said what they saw shows the shooting wasn't justified, but they and the public pressed for weeks to get all of the footage publicly released so that people could determine for themselves who was at fault in the incident.

The family ended their effort last Friday, with their attorneys filing a motion to withdraw a petition seeking a court order to obtain all of the video.

Sellers said Thursday that was merely a technicality and that the family still wants all of the video public released.

"Good, bad or otherwise, we want everything to come out about this case," he said. "We want everybody to see everything – the SBI report, the autopsy report, the videos. Show it all."

As part of an agreement to release all of the video, Sellers said, Pasquotank County authorities were pushing to prevent Brown's family or attorneys from publicly discussing what the videos showed beyond what has already been released.

The family is close to filing a federal lawsuit over the shooting, and they need to be able to include the videos and be able to talk about them as part of their case, he said.

"We refuse to be bound by any a gag order that would prevent us from filing copies of that video or discussing what we saw in the video," he said. "They are fighting us tooth and nail to release that video to the public."

A coalition of media organizations, including WRAL News' parent, Capitol Broadcasting Co., also continues to press for the release of all of the video in the case.

Foster ruled the media didn't have the right to obtain the video and also said he wouldn't consider releasing any of the video publicly until after the State Bureau of Investigation and the Pasquotank County Sheriff's Office finished their investigations of the shooting. Both investigations are complete.