Maria-Paula
Isaiah Brown, 32, was seriously wounded by a Virginia sheriff’s deputy outside his home on Wednesday early morning.
The Virginia state police reported that at 2:30 am, Mr. Brown got a ride from a Spotsylvania County deputy who had responded to a distress call from a driver whose car had stalled at a gas station miles away from home.
According to a 911 call recording, the deputy responded to yet another 911 distress call for a purported ”domestic incident” between Brown and his brother less than an hour later. The dispatcher heard their argument from the background as Brown demanded a gun from his brother and echoed that he would kill him. The demand was not met.
Despite Brown saying he had no weapon 90 seconds before the shooting, the deputy who found him walking on the road assumed the cordless house phone he was using in calling another emergency dispatcher was a gun. ”He’s got a gun to his head. Drop the gun now and stop walking towards me,” shouted the deputy who was 50 feet away. ‘’Stop! Stop!’’
Isaiah Brown complied with the dispatcher’s orders and surrendered as instructed by raising his hands with the phone.
The sheriff nonetheless opened fire on the unarmed man injuring his face, neck, chest, and pelvic area.
A 911 call released alongside the deputy’s body-camera footage by the Spotsylvania County sheriff, Roger L. Harris, on Friday recorded 7 gunshots. The recording did not give a view of the happenings of the incident, but only part of the sheriff’s car and road.
On Saturday, Yolanda Brown, the victim’s sister said that the brother having been shot 10 times was on a breathing machine ”fighting for his life” in an ICU unit. ”I’m just still trying to figure out where he felt the threat at, to feel the need to shoot.” reiterated Ms. Brown.
Mr. David Hayes, the Brown’s family attorney, feels the deputy made a lot of policing errors by violating established protocols and says the shooting was completely avoidable.” He was never threatened and should not have discharged his weapon,” said Hayes.
Just like Ma’Khia Bryant from Columbia, Ohio, and Andrew Brown from Elizabeth City, North Carolina, Isaiah Brown’s shooting comes at a time when law enforcement agencies are on the public radar for fatal shootings of the Black community.
Virginia state police, the agency running the investigations through its spokeswoman Corrine Geller, said it is set to hand over its findings to Fredericksburg, VA commonwealth’s attorney La Bravia J. Jenkins who was appointed special prosecutor in this case.
According to the sheriff’s office policy, the unnamed white deputy has been put on administrative leave as investigations continue.
