Deadly Police Shootings Draw Protests In Tulsa, Charlotte
TULSA (CBSNewYork/CBS News) -- Protesters gathered Tuesday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Charlotte, North Carolina, following officer-involved shootings that left two black men dead in recent days.
In Tulsa, Terence Crutcher, 40, was shot and killed Friday by Officer Betty Shelby, who had been responding to a report of a stalled vehicle. Crutcher is black, Shelby white.
Police said Crutcher did not have a weapon on him or in his sport-utility vehicle.
Investigators on Tuesday said they found the drug PCP in Crutcher's car. But his family's attorney said the drug discovery is a distraction that does not justify the shooting, and it is also unclear if Crutcher was on the drug during the incident.
Police helicopter video shows Crutcher walking toward his car with his hands up. Police said he was not cooperating, and said another officer used a Taser on him before Shelby fired one shot.
Shelby's attorney said Crutcher reached out for something.
On Tuesday night, around 200 protesters gathered outside the Tulsa Police Department, many of them chanting, "Fire Betty."
"He looks at her and his left hand breaks the pane of where the window would be, as if he was reaching in, and at that time she fired one shot," said officer attorney Scott Wood. "She was in fear of her life."
But Crutcher family attorney Benjamin Crump countered, "How can he be reaching into the car if the window is up and there is blood on the glass?"
Shelby was placed on paid administrative leave. The Department of Justice was investigating.
Meanwhile on in Charlotte Tuesday, police said a person was killed in an officer-involved shooting at an apartment complex. Officers said they were searching for a person with an outstanding warrant when they saw a person get out of a vehicle with a firearm, CBS News reported.
When the person got back into the vehicle, the officers approached, CBS affiliate WBTV-TV reported. The report states that the person then got back out of the vehicle "armed with a firearm and posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers who subsequently fired their weapon striking the subject."
The officers said they immediately requested MEDIC and began performing CPR, WBTV reported. The person was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Police said a firearm "the subject was holding at the time of the shooting" was recovered at the scene, and that detectives were interviewing witnesses to the incident, CBS News reported.
The officer who fired the shot has not been identified, but a police source told WBTV he is African-American.
WBTV reported that a woman claiming to be the man's daughter live streamed the scene on Facebook for more than an hour after the shooting, CBS News reported.
In a video, she claimed her father was unarmed when he was shot, while in his vehicle reading a book. The woman claimed her father was waiting for the school bus to drop off his son.
WBTV reported that the woman said she heard police come up to the man yelling at him to get his hands up, and then breaking open the car window. She claimed he had a Taser used on him and was then shot four times. In the video, she said the man was disabled, didn't have a gun and was even scared of them.
WBTV reported that about 100 people gathered at the scene of the shooting late Tuesday.
