Pasquotank County District Attorney Andrew Womble said Tuesday the sheriff’s deputies who shot Andrew Brown Jr. last month in Elizabeth City would not be criminally charged and were “justified” in their decision to use deadly force.

“After reviewing the investigation conducted by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Brown’s death, while tragic, was justified because Mr. Brown’s actions caused three deputies with the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office to reasonably believe it was necessary to use deadly force to protect themselves and others,” Womble told reporters at a press conference. 

The State Bureau of Investigation says they will not be releasing any reports or public records from their investigation. They said in a statement that they were not involved in the charges and will not be commenting on the decision because of their role as an “impartial fact-finder.” An FBI civil rights investigation is ongoing.

The Elizabeth City Facebook page told residents to be ready for road closures downtown throughout the day. Both the town and Pasquotank County government buildings have closed early.

During the press conference, Womble shared body camera footage from deputies who arrived at Brown’s residence to serve him with a warrant for two drug-related charges. The footage shows deputies dressed in tactical gear jumping out of a truck bed with guns drawn, circling Brown as he sits idle in his car.

After a few moments, Brown backs up and begins to drive away from the deputies, who then open fire through the windows of his automobile. An independent autopsy commissioned by Brown’s family showed the officers’ fatal shot hit the father of seven in the back of the head.

Womble said the deputies were justified in their use of force because Brown’s vehicle took off in the direction of the deputies as they attempted to serve the warrants. In the video, Brown appears to turn his car around in an escape attempt, which prompts the first shot. Attorney Ben Crump also pointed out that four officers did not fire their weapons, concluding that those four clearly “did not feel that their lives were endangered.”

The officers’ shots lasted five seconds total.

Bakari Sellers, an attorney and former congressman that has been helping Brown’s family, called it “a clear violation of policy on top of the recklessness” on Twitter. He attached pages of the county sheriff’s handbook that say deputies should “take reasonable steps to move out of the path of an approaching vehicle.”

Womble noted that additional body camera footage, outside the 44-second clip shared Tuesday, would be considered “personal” files and would not be shared with the public, WAVY-TV reported.

Crump and Sellers, alongside attorney Harry Daniels and Chantel Cherry Lassiter, released a statement calling for the release of the full video.

“Andrew Brown Jr., his grieving family, and this community deserve answers,” it reads. “And they received anything but from D.A. Womble’s attempt to whitewash this unjustified killing.”

In a statement, the ACLU of North Carolina were among those who criticized the decision not to bring charges against the deputies, which the civil rights group sarcastically said was a “sign that the system is working as it was designed to.”

Less than two percent of law enforcement officers are prosecuted for fatal shootings, according to one estimate. 

“These cases of state-sanctioned murder are not anomalies. They are business as usual,” the statement continued. “Until we have radically changed the many ways the criminal legal system harms and kills Black and Brown people, justice will continue to elude its victims.”

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