Return to Transcripts main page

At This Hour

Family Attorney: Brown was Shot 5 Times Including "Fatal Shot" to Head. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired April 27, 2021 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:00:16]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. Thank you so much for joining us.

At this hour, we are standing by for press conference from the family and attorney for Andrew Brown Jr. They're expected to reveal the results of an independent autopsy done for the family proving some more answers to what potentially happened, why Andrew Brown died at the hands of police six days ago. This is important because any information about the circumstances here have been hard to come by. We're going to bring that to you as soon as they begin.

Overnight, there were more protests in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. And again, they were peaceful. Protesters are demanding to see the full body camera footage after hearing from the Brown family yesterday that they were shown a redacted and blurred portion of the video only.

Here's what they say they saw.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KHALIL FEREBEE, SON OF ANDREW BROWN JR.: Heart broken. You know? We got a little bit of evidence. But that wasn't enough for us. Starting the video, I heard shots fired. And it was pretty -- it was pretty much clear that he was trying to get away instead of engaging in any officers. He was trying to get away. And they just kept firing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: All right. Let's go there. Joining me right now is Brian Todd who's in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

Brian, what's the very latest?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, just moments, the attorneys for the Brown family are going to hold a news conference behind me at the sheriff's office to talk about the results of their independent autopsy. We hope to get some crucial information there, possibly information on the number of bullets which Andrew Brown received, exactly how did he die? You know, how many times was he hit?

We do have a copy -- we obtained a copy of the death certificate which says that the cause of death was a single penetrating gunshot wound to the head. He died within minutes of receiving that wound. We don't have a lot of other information on how many times Andrew Brown might have been hit.

There was dispatch, police dispatch audio which said the victim had received gunshot wounds to the back. Again that, is dispatch audio at the very moment of the incident. So that can be unclear.

We hope to get those answers in just minutes from now when the lawyers speak to us. We have got accounts from them. After they viewed that 20 second snippet of the body camera footage.

And they have come up with some very graphic descriptions. They say Andrew Brown was shot almost execution style as he tried to drive away. They said he posed no threat to the sheriff's deputies at the moment now. He backed up to move around them, and trying to drive away without ever pointing his vehicle at them or using his vehicle as a weapon in any way.

So, there's -- you know, this is a description coming from them and they say that several sheriff deputies had surrounded his vehicle and shot at him. I asked Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, one of the attorneys, how many deputies were surrounding that vehicle, she said at least six or seven.

Now, we're told by the sheriff that not all seven sheriff's deputies were on administrative leave discharge their weapons. So, we get some of more those answers, but, Kate, it's going to --

BOLDUAN: Because Ben Crump is beginning to speak, it looks like it's starting right now.

BEN CRUMP, BROWN FAMILY ATTORNEY: We have the honor of representing the family of Andrew brown Jr. in these tragic circumstances. We also have present with us today, you all know Ms. Gwenn Carr is here. But we have Ms. Tenicka Cox, who is the mother of Fred Cox whose son was killed by police in High Point, North Carolina, at a church.

Not only did they killing us for driving while black, shopping while black, having a cell phone while black, sleeping while black, like Botham Jean, being in our apartment while black, but her son was killed while at the church, while black. She didn't think that robbery (ph), opted to come here and be with Andrew Brown's family. She like Ms. Gwen Carr, we thank her and we continue to pray for justice for your son as well.

Fred Cox Jr.

UNIDENTIFIE MALE: Amen.

CROWD: Fred Cox Jr.

CRUMP: Now today, as we are informed to you yesterday, we have the results of our autopsy report that was performed by Dr. Brent Hall, the Autopsy Professional Association.

[11:05:22] And you all will get copies of the autopsy report as well as the anatomical models at the end of the press conference and for those of you not present with us in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, if you go to press@bencrump.com, they will send it to you electronically.

We're going to hear from our legal team in this order and then we're going to hear from the family members that are present. You're going to hear from attorney Wayne Kendall, and he's going to go through some of the details of the autopsy.

Then you're going to hear from my other great co-counsel, good omega, that is going to be Attorney Harry Daniels.

Then you're going to hear from the brilliant commentator, attorney, Bakari Sellers.

And you will hear from Khalil, the son of Andrew Brown Jr.

And finally, from my legal team, you will hear from Chantel Lassiter who not only is a member of our legal team, but personally knew Andrew very well. And this is going to be most emotional for his son and his family, but also for Chantel who became like family and working with this family.

I want to thank Mr. Darius Horton. He really helped the family a lot. He will be handling the services, the funeral services on Monday at 12:00 noon. But he also made sure that whatever the family needed are making sure they work with the medical examiner, that he accommodated them.

So, we can never say thank you enough, Mr. Horton.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. Horton.

Now you all know from the death certificate that it was a penetrating gunshot wound to the head.

But, Attorney Sellers, what they did not know was that it was a kill shot to the back of the head. And so, we're going to have the attorney go through the autopsy report for you in detail. And then we're going to have other members of the legal team talk about the relevance of how we put this puzzle together because they won't release the video.

So painstakingly, we have to keep putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

Attorney Wayne Kendall?

WAYNE KENDALL, BROWN FAMILY ATTORNEY: Thank you, Ben. My name is Wayne Kendall.

I want to thank the Brown family for an opportunity to be here and be part of legal team representing them in this investigation and the legal part of representing them if necessary in court. (INAUDIBLE)

KENDALL: We commissioned a private individual autopsy report post mortem report. We don't have access to anything that is 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 --

CRUMP: Hold on one second. They're trying to do some surveillance on us.

KENDALL: 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 in located in.

[11:10:16]

And what happened was there were five four bullet wounds, excuse me, four bullet wounds to his right arm. So 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 and spin off across a vacant lot. 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 crash 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 he crashed into the tree and after he had been hit in the back of the head.

The certificate also says that the time of death was within minutes, within minutes after this particular gunshot wound to the back of the head.

Thank you.

CRUMP: Thank you, Attorney Kendall.

As Attorney Harry Daniels comes before you, it's important to note that the gunshot wound to the head, the entrance was the back of the head. Range, intermediate projectiles, sequentially perforated and penetrated his skull and his brain.

It's important to note that the projectile was recovered in his brain and it never exited.

And the trajectory, Attorney Daniels, was from bottom to top, left to right, back to front. So, it went into the base of the neck, in the bottom of the skull, and got lodged in his brain.

And that was the cause of death.

Attorney Harry Daniels will put this in greater context.

(CROSSTALK)

HARRY DANIELS, BROWN FAMILY ATTORNEY: Execution. That's what took place. That's what attorney -- they described. He went over the medical points of it. But that's exactly what he described, overkill, execution. The law enforcement in this country cannot be judge, jury, and executioner.

Andrew did not get his due process. He was innocent. I don't care what the warrant -- what the search warrant, he was innocent. He maintained the presumption of innocence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

DANIELS: So as far as I'm concerned, an innocent man was killed by law enforcement. Overkill, unjustified shooting. Shot this man while he had his hands on the steering wheel.

He wasn't fleeing. He wasn't fleeing. Let's get that work done. He wasn't fleeing. He was trying to run because he was scared of his life.

[11:15:04]

He was scared for his life. And anybody here, if you get shot at -- hold on, brother. Hold on, brother. If you get shot at, and you are going to run. That's bottom line, second nature. Fight or flight, you're going to run.

He left trying to save his life and they continued to shoot and put a bullet in the back of his head, in the back of his head. A black man unarmed, a bullet in back of his head. No reason whatsoever, of innocent man.

You can put out whatever you want to put out. You can try to assassinate his character. But you need to talk about the assassination of him and who committed this assassination.

CROWD: That's right. That's right. DANIELS: All right. I'm going to pass on to Bakari Sellers.

(CROSSTALK)

BAKARI SELLERS, BROWN FAMILY ATTORNEY: You know, one of the things that I wanted to mention today is that we have the -- we have the privilege of --

(CROSSTALK)

SELLERS: You know, my brothers, this is a message for everyone watching.

(CROSSTALK)

SELLERS: Hey. Hey. You don't have to like us. That's fine. But please have respect -- please have respect for the family.

So, what we're trying to say is you don't have to care for Ben or Bakari or Harry, you don't have to be Democrat or Republican. You don't have to be white or black to realize that what this family has not gotten is justice.

We have an -- we had an execution here in Elizabeth City. We had had an execution here in Elizabeth City. What I want people to understand while we have this execution is we demand justice from the sheriff's department. We demand justice from this district attorney. We demand justice not for anybody standing up here but we demand justice for Andrew Brown and his family.

CROWD: Amen.

SELLERS: Andrew Brown and his children.

So you don't have to care or like Benjamin Crump. You don't have to like Mr. Sellers. You don't have the to like Harry Daniels. You don't have to be a Democrat or a Republican to feel like injustice was done.

You don't have to be black. You don't have to be white. You just have to have a beating heart. A moral conscience, to understand that injustice was done.

So we will deal with people who may not like us. We'll deal with people that may not vote like us.

But at the end of the day, I don't care who you look like, who you pray to, where you walk or how you vote. What I do care about is that an injustice was done.

You got me carried away. I know people said that, you know, I switch accents. But my daddy in Denmark, in Denmark, South Carolina, my daddy would say you never argue with a fool because you don't know who's watching. And they can't tell the difference.

But I'm saying today for everybody, we are on the same side. We want justice. We actually had a conversation. We stand together. We got -- we got Khalil. We got his brother on FaceTime right here. We

got Khalil's mama right here. We have the mother of the family. We have five kids.

And I don't care how you vote. I don't care if you're black or white. I don't care if you don't hike me.

But have a moral conscience for the injustice that's going on. The media has to gain control and say we demand some transparency and some action from this body. We don't know what the video is going to show. They ain't shown us nothing. And we also have bad laws in the state of North Carolina.

And everybody should be held accountable for the fact that in Columbus, Ohio -- in Columbus, Ohio, in Columbus, Ohio, the video came out in a few hours. And you hear that pain? You hear the pain of the young lady in the back? That pain is all throughout the community.

(CROSSTALK)

SELLERS: So the last point I want to make is the question we get asked. One of the worst questions we always get asked is, can the family tell everybody to be calm and peaceful? And people always come up to the family and put that onus on them.

You know, they always say can the family have a message to people? We appreciate the people who are protesting peacefully. We appreciate that. But if we want calm, if we want justice, then that onus is not on this family. That onus is on the people who are hiding the information we need to get answers.

So I know we want to yell and scream. I just ask that you take a moment and breathe and pray for Khalil.

[11:20:01]

Khalil is going to come up and Khalil is the only one that is in this audience I do believe that actually had to witness his father be executed. So again, I don't care what you look like, who you vote for or who you like and don't like up here. I understand that.

But let's lift this young brother up because he witness something he's now a part of a fraternity that none of us want to be a part of.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Amen.

KHALIL FEREBEE, SON OF ANDREW BROWN, JR.: For one, it's too much violence going on. That's not the key. That is going to make everything worse. There is too much going on already when it's black folks doing it to each other. You know what I'm saying?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's right.

FEREBEE: That's not right at all. We need to focus on that. If that's the case, you know what I'm saying? So, violence is not the key.

But to my pops, man. Yesterday, I saw him executed. The autopsy report shows me that was correct.

Those three gun shots to the arm, that wasn't enough? That wasn't enough? It's obvious he was trying to get away. It's obvious. And they're going to shoot him in the back of the head?

Man, that is not right. That's no the right at all, man.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not right.

FEREBEE: Man, stuff got to change. It really got to change, for real.

CRUMP: There were four gun shots to the arm and then they kept shooting. Now we're going to hear from Attorney Chantel Lassiter.

CHANTEL CHERRY-LASSITER, BROWN FAMILY ATTORNEY: I want you to hear the pain in this community, the pain that the young son, this is pain. And a lot of times pain is interpreted as rebellion or whatever people want to interpret it as.

Call it what it is. It is painful. This is painful for this family. It's painful for this community.

We came up here yesterday and as Khalil said, and we told you, it was execution. People are questioning, well, you know, what about this and what about that. It was an execution. It was an assassination of this unarmed black man and that is painful.

And we are tired. Mothers are tired, sisters are tired.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's right.

CHERRY-LASSITER: Father's are tried.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's right.

CHERRY-LASSITER: Communities are tired. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, people that you call your family is tired.

People are yelling and it's not traditional. It's not conforming to the norm. It is pain. You have to hear that. And justice will be served.

CRUMP: Ms. Gwen Carr, Ms. Tenicka Cox, two members of a fraternity that nobody wants to be a part of. Some say it's one of the quickest growing fraternities in the black community. So as an attorney, she talked about pain. You see the pain in real life with these mothers who have a hole in their hearts forever because their sons didn't bury them. They buried their sons.

We will start with Ms. Gwen Carr who is one of the original mothers of the movement from New York City. Her son is Eric Garner.

GWEN CARR, MOTHER OF ERIC GARNER: Good morning, everyone.

CROWD: Good morning. CARR: Here I stand again in solidarity with this family, who has

joined a fraternity, a club that no one wants to be a part of. But when do you become a part of it, you don't know the pain. You don't know the strength that the family has to have in order to endure.

And to -- for Khalil to watch his father being executed, do you -- can you just imagine put yourself, don't only have sympathy, have empathy. Put yourself in that position.

What would you do if you could -- if you saw your child, your mother, father whom ever being executed? An unarmed person being executed. They came here for that purpose. They never intended, in my opinion, they never intended to take him alive.

They came with the intention. They had their own agenda when they came to that car.

[11:20:04]

And that's not right.

This is what they do in the black and brown communities. They come to us. They brutalize, they terrorize, they kill, and then swept under the rug.

But we have to come together as communities to stop this. We can't keep going through this. My son died almost seven years ago. And I had to watch his execution over and over again.

I never watched the tape in its entirety because I couldn't. I know it will be just like a lot of these family members. They're not going to be able to see that.

It's horrible what they do to us, and it has to stop. It has to stop. All black and brown men are not terrorists. They're not all guilty.

They talk about police not being all bad. So, all black people are not bad. They're in every community. In every race and creed, we have bad people. Just watch scary people. You watch that on TV. And it's not all us.

But you know, I just want you all to embrace this family. I want you all to give this family justice. I want the media to record this for what it is. Because it is what it is, an execution.

BOLDUAN: All right. We've been listening in on this press conference. We learned a lot here as they announced this independent autopsy for the family.

Let me bring in CNN law enforcement analyst, Anthony Barksdale. He is a former acting Baltimore police commissioner, as well as Joye Carter. She's a forensic pathologist joining us now.

Anthony, just your reaction to everything we just learned?

ANTHONY BARKSDALE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: That was emotional. But sticking to what evidence they have right now, the shots to the arm and then a shot to the head.

We really all need to see the video. I'm really concerned. I want to hear -- I want to see why these shots are being fired.

I'm also starting to have a real problem understanding why this takedown occurred while Mr. Brown was behind the wheel. There are so many ways to make an arrest if someone is wanted on a warrant. You don't have to go after someone in a vehicle. If he's trying to drive away and did you want stop him, then you let him go. You regroup, you come up with another way.

This isn't making sense. North Carolina has this time to show us all. So I'm as skeptical. I'm just as concerned about the lack of transparency as anyone in North Carolina, as anyone in the world right now. This isn't making sense.

BOLDUAN: Anthony, real quick on that. They believe that what they are seeing from the autopsy information they have is they were shooting into the moving vehicle as he was driving away. They say it has to be that. He was shot in the back of the head. Just the way it played out.

Why it is even more important now to see the video? Talk to me more about this.

BARKSDALE: You're looking at -- you want to look at many things. Training, tactics, accountability, and discipline with firearms. These police, they're supposed to be professionals.

This shouldn't happen. That back shot to the head, that really needs to be explained. If an officer was in front of the vehicle and started to fire and he positioned himself there, once again, we're looking at police training.

So again and again, we're getting back to the police. And somebody that has a warrant on them is not sentenced to death. This is going on too much.

So the video and we all need to see it. And we also need to know more about how many shots were fired? I want to know 223 rounds which come from an A.R. 15. I want to know if they carry .9 millimeter, .4 millimeters, there something we all need to know. We're not getting it in North Carolina.

BOLDUAN: Dr. Carter, you come at this from obviously a very important and different perspective. Can you give me your reaction to everything we just heard as they laid out this independent autopsy?

DR. JOYE CARTER, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST, SAN LUIS OBISPO SHERIFF'S OFFICE: Certainly. Thank you for having me. You see the value of the second autopsy. The family and the representatives did not know what was going on, the nature of the shots, where they entered, what damage was done. And now having heard the findings, you want to see the report.