[WARNING: The video below contains footage of a police shooting in Charlotte that is graphic and could be traumatizing.]
CMPD on Tuesday released footage from a Nov. 5, 2021, police shooting in Charlotte in which two officers shot and killed 33-year-old Derrell Raney in the parking lot of a Walmart on Albemarle Road. The shooting occurred after a security guard there told police Raney had pointed a gun at him and threatened him.
CMPD’s timeline of the day points to the possibility that Raney may have been suffering through some sort of mental-health episode on the morning of the shooting.
Tuesday’s release includes 43 videos containing body-camera footage from officers who were either on the scene at the time of the shooting or arrived after the fact, including officers Micah Edmunds (below) and James Longworth, who both fired at Raney.
The video shows the officers approaching Raney as he reaches into his backpack for what appears to be a gun. The officers yell “put your hands up” and then “set it down,” among other things, before opening fire.
A CMPD statement claims that Raney “began to raise the firearm up in the direction of the officers,” though that’s hard to confirm in the video. Queen City Nerve was on the scene of the shooting about an hour after it occurred and is unaware of any version of events that conflicts with CMPD’s in terms of what happened in the lead-up to the shooting. In multiple videos released Tuesday, the security guard can be heard after the shooting alleging that Raney had aimed a gun at him.
According to CMPD’s version of events, officers with the department first responded to the shopping center at around 4:30 p.m. that afternoon for an unrelated call for service at a salon there, then while addressing that call, responded to a subsequent yet separate call for service at the Food Lion next door. It was while responding to the second call that an employee with a security company hired by Walmart in the same shopping center approached officers and said a man had pointed a gun at one of their employees.
At around 5:50 p.m., officers Edmunds and Longworth were flagged down by security again, who told them they had spotted the suspect, who turned out to be Raney. The officers went to a different part of the lot to investigate and found Raney sitting in the grass with his backpack.
According to CMPD’s statement on Tuesday, this was not the first interaction Raney had with CMPD officers on Nov. 5, 2021. At around 6 a.m. that morning, officers responded to a call near an apartment complex off Albemarle Road about three miles west of where the shooting would take place later that day.
During the morning call, Derrell Raney allegedly told officers he had found two dead bodies behind a building at the complex. Officers reportedly “found no evidence or validity to Mr. Raney’s claims,” according to CMPD.
According to Tuesday’s statement, members of CMPD’s Crisis Intervention Team responded to the morning call and urged Raney to go to a hospital for evaluation, but he refused.
“The officers found Mr. Raney to be lucid and not a danger to himself or others, so they did not have cause to seek involuntary commitment papers on the family’s behalf,” the statement read. “Officers reached out to Mr. Raney’s family to notify them of the situation and explain how to seek an involuntary commitment order.”
Charlotte City Council convened for a closed-session private meeting on Monday to review the video before its release to the public. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations is currently investigating the police shooting and will send the results of its investigation to the Mecklenburg County District Attorney for a decision on whether any charges will be filed.
Become a Nerve Member: Get better connected and become a member of Queen City Nerve to support local journalism for as little as $5 per month. Our community journalism helps inform you through a range of diverse voices.
This work by Queen City Nerve is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
