Man shot by Raleigh officer after I-440 wreck has died, police say
A man shot by a Raleigh police officer after a crash on Interstate 440 Tuesday afternoon has died, police said Wednesday.
The man, whose name has not been released, was shot after he swung a knife at officers, Chief Estella Patterson said at a Tuesday news conference.
The State Bureau of Investigation will review the case, which is the department’s standard procedure when an officer shoots someone.
Patterson did not know how many shots were fired but said police would count the rounds fired by officers on the scene.
She declined to identify the officers, but said they would be placed on administrative leave according to protocol.
It was the third fatal shooting by Triangle law enforcement officers this month.
Durham police killed a man they say attacked a convenience store clerk Wednesday morning, and Durham County sheriff’s deputies fatally shot a woman they say pointed a shotgun at them last week.
Tuesday’s shooting took place after Raleigh police responded to a crash just after 1:30 p.m. on the Beltline between exits 12 (Brentwood Avenue) and 13 (U.S. 64 Business/New Bern Avenue), Patterson said.
She said 911 calls indicated a person was intoxicated, and officers were “alerted that an individual was armed with a knife.”
Officers approached the individual, who Patterson said was walking with a small child and carrying a knife. Officers demanded multiple times that he drop the knife, but the man did not comply, police said in the Wednesday news release.
Patterson said Tuesday that police had not yet determined whether there was a language barrier, but added they believed he understood their commands.
Police used a Taser on the man “to try to defuse the situation,” Patterson said.
When he got up, police shot him after “the individual swung the knife toward officers,” she said.
The man received aid on scene and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The Raleigh Police Department’s internal affairs unit will also investigate whether officers followed department policy. The department’s initial findings will be submitted to the city within five business days.
Patterson asked anyone with information about the incident to contact the SBI or the Raleigh Police Department’s internal affairs unit.
“I want to wait until we have all the information before making any decisions or before making any statements concerning whether the shooting was justified or not justified,” she said. “We just don’t have all that information at this time.”
911 calls describe wreck
The Police Department released audio from three 911 calls and the police radio feed about the wreck on Wednesday.
Just after 1:31 p.m., two 911 callers traveling eastbound describe driving by the scene.
“There’s a pickup truck ... that’s just flipped over,” one caller said. “I’m on the other side of the highway.”
A third caller around the same time says “somebody ran me off the road.”
“He just rammed me,” the caller said. “He flipped his whole car and ran me off the road. Oh my god. My car is totaled.”
The caller identified the vehicle that hit him as a truck, but said they did not know what make it was.
“Do you need an ambulance?” the 911 operator asked.
“No, he needs one,” the caller said of the man who hit him.
The man that police say had a knife was shot around 1:44 p.m., about 13 minutes after the crash, according to the police radio feed.
Two minutes later, officers told incoming units to block off I-440.
Raleigh police have not released details about what caused the initial crash.
23-second video
A 23-second video posted to social media and obtained by The News & Observer showed the man being shot as multiple officers tried to apprehend him.
In the video, officers approach the man while he is seen trying to walk away. At the same time, a woman moves the child in another direction.
The man continues walking away before one of the officers tases him.
After the man falls to the ground, five officers surround him.
A few seconds later, the man appears to struggle to get up and is on his knees. Two officers draw their weapons.
The man is shot and falls over.
Steven Valerio and his uncle witnessed the shooting. They were driving on I-440 when they saw a dark pickup on its side with smoke coming out of it, Valerio told the N&O Tuesday night. A few people were trying to help the people inside the truck.
Valerio and his uncle pulled over and approached the truck. A teenage boy was lying down on the pavement, screaming, Valerio said. An elderly woman by the truck had bruises on her face, Valerio said.
Nearly 60 feet away, he said a young child sitting on the ground was bleeding from his head and looked like he was in shock.
“I could definitely tell he was in pain, but he wasn’t making a single sound,” Valerio told The N&O.
They saw a man inside the truck, buried beneath construction materials, including plumbing pipes and buckets that had spilled on top of him. He seemed unresponsive, Valerio said, but minutes later, pulled himself outside of the truck.
Almost immediately, Valerio said, the man got into a heated argument with the driver of a black sedan involved in the wreck. The driver of the sedan was yelling at the man, and the man appeared to be getting defensive, Valerio said.
“They almost got into a physical fight,” but before that could happen, the first police officer arrived, Valerio said.
The officer was trying to understand what had happened, and tried to keep the driver of the pickup truck calm, Valerio said. Several other officers, paramedics and firefighters started arriving on the scene.
But instead of the man calming down, Valerio said, he appeared to become more aggressive. At one point, Valerio heard people screaming.
He turned around and said he saw the man holding a knife.
Repeated calls to drop knife
Valerio’s observations echo Patterson’s brief description of what happened.
Officers repeatedly told the man to put the knife down, but he refused, Valerio said. The man started walking away, but then turned around and grabbed hold of the child who was found outside the truck.
“That’s where it really escalated because he had the knife in his hands,” Valerio said.
Valerio heard officers repeatedly tell the man to put the knife down, but he didn’t.
It’s unclear how many times police shot at the man. But Valerio said he and his uncle heard at least four to five shots.
Valerio compared the rapidly escalating situation to “those movie scenes where someone gets shot, and it’s like slow-motion, and this quietness.”
“In my mind, that’s actually how it felt,” Valerio said. “It literally felt like time froze and I just couldn’t believe that this man just got shot.”
After the man was shot, paramedics moved the man onto a stretcher and took him away by ambulance.
The accident and shooting closed multiple westbound lanes of I-440, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation. At one point, traffic backed up nearly 2 miles, said NCDOT spokesman Marty Homan.
Body camera footage
Officers at the scene Tuesday were wearing active body cameras, including the officer who shot the man.
The police department said it will petition for the release of the video, a step required by state law before any footage can be shared with the public.
Tuesday’s shooting came after Durham County Sheriff’s Office deputies shot and killed a 28-year-old woman in Bahama in northern Durham County last week.
The woman was at home on John Jones Road when deputies responded to a disturbance call. The office said she pointed a shotgun at deputies despite multiple attempts to get her to put it down.
The deputies did not have body cameras, Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman AnnMarie Breen said in an email.
The county approved funding last year, and a contractor has been “installing hardware, software and storage,” she said.
“We are going to be rolling them out very soon,” she said.
A deputy has been placed on administrative leave and the SBI is conducting an investigation, the office said.
Wednesday morning, Durham police officers fatally shot a man they say attacked a clerk with a sharp object at a Circle K store on N.C. 54.
The News & Observer has asked Durham police if officers were wearing active body cameras at the time of the shooting.
Staff writer Aaron Sánchez-Guerra contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 11, 2022 at 3:09 PM.
