A sheriff's deputy has shot and killed a man in eastern North Carolina.
The Pasquotank County Sheriff's Office says it was serving a warrant in Elizabeth City this morning when the deputy fatally shot Andrew Brown Jr. The deputy's identity has not been released, but they are on administrative leave per standard protocol.
Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten said the State Bureau of Investigation is taking over the case.
"The Sheriff's Office will be transparent and take the proper actions based on the findings of the SBI's investigation," he said.
Wooten didn't know Brown's age and didn't release the name of the deputy. Their races weren't immediately clear.
Wooten said the deputy was wearing a body-worn camera. He said his office is reviewing footage, but would not say whether he intends to release it to the public.
Neither Wooten nor the SBI would release any more details about the shooting. The local district attorney said the investigation would not be a rush to judgment.
WAVY-TV reported that neighbors heard multiple shots fired. Wooten declined at a news conference to say how many shots were fired. A crowd gathered around the shooting scene in the city of nearly 18,000, located 170 miles northeast of Raleigh.
Keith Rivers, president of the Pasquotank County chapter of the NAACP, called for an independent investigation into the shooting and criticized the sheriff's office for taking hours to release details, even after a crowd of about 100 people gathered near the scene.
"When is it going to stop? We just got a verdict yesterday," Rivers said in a phone interview, referring to the guilty verdicts handed down Tuesday in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the fatal shooting of George Floyd. "Is it open season now? At some point, it has to stop. We have to start holding the people in charge accountable."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
