Lawyers: Black man shot 5 times by deputies

An autopsy shows that Andrew Brown Jr., a Black man killed by deputies in North Carolina, was shot five times, including in the back of the head, attorneys for the man's family announced on Tuesday.

Video Transcript

WAYNE KENDALL: My name is Wayne Kendall. I want to first thank the Brown family for giving me the opportunity to be here to be a part of the legal team representing them in this investigation and the legal part of representing them, if necessary, in court.

- [INAUDIBLE]

- Yeah.

WAYNE KENDALL: We commissioned a private individual autopsy report, post mortem report because we don't have access to anything that's official. And what our preliminary autopsy report shows is that there were five penetrating bullet wounds to the body of Andrew Brown, Jr.

Now consistent with what you have probably already heard is that the first initial shots were through the front windshield of the vehicle that he was located in at the time that-- hold on second. They're trying to do surveillance on us.

What you probably heard already and you heard yesterday when Ms. Lassiter gave her recitation of what she saw on the video yesterday was that Mr. Brown had his arms up on the steering wheel of the vehicle that he was then located in. And what happened was that there were five-- four bullet wounds, excuse me, four bullet wounds to his right arm. These bullet wounds, according to the autopsy, were more or less glancing shots. They were not fatal shots.

So he was able to back up as these shots were coming into the vehicle. He was able to back up, turn the vehicle around, spin off across a vacant lot. And at that time, he was hit in the back of the head here, and that is the fatal bullet wound that was described in the death certificate as a penetrating bullet wound to the skull. And that was the cause of death. That was the manner of death by gunshot.

So we now know, because we have not been able to get any official documentation concerning this shooting, that this, in fact, was a fatal wound to the back of Mr. Brown's head as he was leaving the site trying to evade being shot at by these particular law-enforcement officers who we believe did nothing but a straight-out execution by shooting him in the back of his head as he was trying to get away in a moving vehicle, which no doubt is also against police practice to shoot into a moving vehicle to a person who posed no threat whatsoever to the officers then and there on the scene.

So in summary, his death was caused by these officers with a bullet wound to the back of his head that caused him to lose control of that vehicle and crashed into a tree. And I think once the video actually comes out, we're going to also find out that there were shots into that vehicle after it crashed into the tree and after he had been hit in the back of the head.