Family, friends and neighbors view body of man killed by deputies in Elizabeth City

After a week and a half of shouting in the streets over the police shooting of Andrew Brown Jr., the quieter, more private grieving formally began on Sunday with the public viewing of his body at a funeral home in Hertford.

A slow stream of family, friends and frustrated neighbors filed into the parlor of Horton’s Funeral Home to sign the guest register and stand for a few seconds — or minutes — by Brown’s open casket beginning at 9 a.m.

By 4:45 p.m. Sunday, 300 people had walked into an auditorium at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City to see Brown’s body. About 80 attended the earlier viewing in Hertford, the funeral home said. Close family of Brown’s did not attend either viewing, but had seen the body earlier.

An invitation-only funeral is scheduled for noon Monday at Fountain of Life Church in Elizabeth City. The service will be streamed live by Horton’s Funeral Home.

Brown, 42, was shot and killed by officers of the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office on April 21 as they attempted to serve a warrant on drug charges. Officials have said the shooting was justified, but protesters have marched every evening since the shooting to say it was unnecessary and demonstrates a continuing use of excessive force by police against Black people.

Protesters in Elizabeth City on Saturday and Sunday and in Durham on Saturday called for authorities to release all police video showing what happened the morning deputies killed Brown. A state Superior Court judge on Wednesday turned down media requests to make the video public, though he said more of it could be made available to immediate family members for viewing.

Terrell Green, a cousin of Brown’s who said he grew up around him in Elizabeth City, was among the first to pay his respects Sunday morning.

He stood briefly by Brown’s casket, glanced at a video tribute of him playing on a loop on a wall-mounted TV, and stepped back outside. The video, set to a contemporary gospel song, was a slideshow of photographs from Brown’s life, now largely overshadowed by the circumstances of his death. Standing with his grandmother. Hugging his kids.

Brown’s body, displayed in a crisp white shirt and tie, was obscured by a lace-trimmed veil and surrounded by sprays of red roses and baby’s breath.

Green said he was with Brown and other family members into the early morning hours of April 21, playing cards and hanging out. A few hours later, Brown was dead. An independent pathologist hired by the family has said he was struck in the arm by four bullets and died as a result of a shot to the head from behind.

Green said he has been at the nightly protests, where marchers call for the release of all the video captured by officers’ body cameras and vehicle dash cameras when deputies swarmed Brown in his car outside his house that Wednesday morning.

“I just feel like they’re trying to hide something,” Green said. “They declare a state of emergency, bring in all these officers from all over the place, set a curfew. We haven’t even broken a glass bottle. We just want the truth.”

At the end of the viewing in Hertford, funeral directors loaded Brown’s chrome casket into a Cadillac hearse, their white-gloved hands reflecting in the shine. One of them then drove the hearse across the railroad tracks for the ride to Elizabeth City.

Protests continue

Mud kicked up by the car Brown was driving had dried on the side of his house Sunday, 12 days after he was killed. Next to the mud was a new mural of Brown’s face over the words “Say his name.”

As the two viewings of Brown’s body were held, protesters gathered for one of the largest demonstrations against his death in days. Protesters have marched nightly and some days in response to his death.

“This is a peaceful yet powerful protest,” said the Rev. Greg Drumwright, a Greensboro pastor who organized the rally and brought buses of people to Elizabeth City. “We’re applying pressure against the system of white supremacy....We’re here to stand with the Brown family, to build community around criminal justice reform and greater police accountability.”

Sailboats bobbed in the Albemarle Sound behind Elizabeth City’s waterfront park where the march began. Despite curfews and heavy police presence, Drumwright said Elizabeth City’s response to Brown’s shooting has remained nonviolent.

“No buildings have burned, no property has been destroyed,” Drumwright said. “Because people want change, they don’t want violence. They want change.”

June Overton works at a nursing home in Elizabeth City and spent her day off at Sunday’s rally.

“I felt an obligation to be here,” Overton said. “To have something of this magnitude happen here, I had to be here.”

The visibility of police shootings has grown in recent years, captured on cell phones and police body cams.

Overton said without the video, the impact of the protests have been important, sometimes shutting down streets and traffic.

“People are paying attention, people who didn’t even know,” Overton said. “And now it’s like, OK, something’s going on and it’s big.”

At its peak, around 300 protesters marched down blocked-off Elizabeth City streets, chanting, singing and calling for the body cam footage of Brown’s death to be released. Marchers included members of Brown’s family, including his son Khalil Ferebee.

The march continued back downtown to the Pasquotank County public safety building, where speakers included members of Brown’s family, Rev. William Barber II and Rev. T. Anthony Spearman, the president of the North Carolina NAACP.

While at Brown’s house, marchers gathered in the vacant lot where tracks from his car were still cut into the grass among the clover flowers, crowding by the mural and stepping over candles left by dozens of people. Standing by the mural, Brown’s aunt Lillie Brown-Clark said her nephew joins a tragic history.

“Andrew’s name, as we’ve been saying these 11 days, will be said in Elizabeth City and around the world until the end of time,” Brown-Clark said. “Our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will read his story and his face will be remembered.”

Elizabeth City has struggled economically

The viewings and the protests have introduced new people to Elizabeth City and served as a reunion for those who live here or grew up in the area and moved away.

LaToya Parker, 41, has been gone from Elizabeth City for 12 years. She moved to Richmond, Virginia, she said, because she wanted more than her hometown could offer her. The city and the region have struggled economically, and Elizabeth City has been slowly bleeding residents to places that can offer more jobs.

Parker said she knew Brown in school, and remembered him as a harmless soul, and bashful. Hearing the news that a resident of her town had been killed by police, and that it was a former classmate of hers, was shocking.

“Hurt and disbelief is what I felt,” she said.

Reading people’s comments and speculation on social media in the wake of Brown’s shooting has revealed a level of racism in her hometown Parker said she didn’t know existed.

Parker came home to march in the protest Saturday afternoon out of respect for her former classmate and in solidarity with those who live in the town.

“It feels good to do this,” she said as she walked with 75 others down Ehringhaus Street in the afternoon sun. “It feels right to do this. It just feels right.”

This story was originally published May 2, 2021 at 12:26 PM.