Community on edge after cop fatally shoots man during chase

Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C.

The neighborhood where an officer fatally shot a black man during a foot chase was on edge Tuesday, awaiting answers in one of the latest police shootings in a predominantly African-American community.

Eyewitnesses have offered descriptions of what happened Monday, including a woman who said a black man was shot in the back by a white police officer, but authorities so far have been tight-lipped. Raleigh Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown said an officer was pursuing a man who was wanted on a felony drug charge when the officer opened fire. The chief said a gun was found near the suspect’s body, but she did not say whether it was his.

After the shooting, neighborhood residents began chanting “no justice, no peace” – a slogan used by the Black Lives Matter movement. Later in the evening, about a dozen people gathered around an anti-police sign with an expletive that was hoisted on a utility pole.

The head of the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called for a fair and transparent investigation.

“If one is running away, that is not a license to kill,” the Rev. William Barber II said.

Rolonda Byrd says she is the mother of the man who is believed to have been killed. She said she has talked to the medical examiner and police chief, but they have not told her definitively that her 24-year-old son Akiel Denkins is dead. She said she went to the medical examiner’s office, but wasn’t allowed to look at the body.