At least 9 injured, 44 arrested in Charlotte riots after fatal police shooting

At least nine civilians were injured and 44 were arrested during Wednesday night's riots in Charlotte, North Carolina, police chief Kerr Putney told media Thursday.

Wednesday was the second night of unrest in the city following the fatal police shooting of 43-year-old Keith Scott. Charlotte remains under a state of emergency, and the National Guard has been brought in to assist the police department in handling the protests and protecting infrastructure.

One person remains in critical condition after being shot Wednesday night, Putney said. An earlier report from Charlotte city officials that the wounded man died has been retracted by the city.

Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts told media on Thursday the city's businesses are open and transit is running. She urged for peaceful demonstrations and said the investigation into Scott's shooting will be "full" and "transparent."

Putney said Charlotte police will not immediately be releasing video footage of the shooting, although he plans to honor the Scott family's request to view it. He said the video doesn't definitively show Scott pointing a gun.

“I’m going to be very intentional about protecting the integrity of our investigation,” Putney told media.

Wednesday night's trouble began with a peaceful rally that turned violent after several hundred demonstrators marched through downtown with brief stops at a black church, the police headquarters, and a large entertainment venue called the EpiCentre.

As they approached downtown Charlotte's central intersection, protesters confronted a column of patrol cars and officers lining the road about a block from the Omni Charlotte Hotel and began to surround groups of police officers and their vehicles.

At that point, the police unleashed volleys of rubber bullets, tear gas, and flash-bang grenades to disperse the protesters, who began hurling fireworks and debris at officers outside the hotel.

Protesters were also seen looting a convenience store after smashing its windows.

The team store of the NBA's Charlotte Hornets was also broken into during the protests.

Images on social media showed several of the store's windows had been broken, and police officers were stationed outside the storefront.

Hornets team store at arena looted #wcnc #KeithScott pic.twitter.com/rCh8mkKr5b

— Ty Chandler (@TyChandler_News) September 22, 2016

Sixteen officers were injured late Tuesday and early Wednesday as police officers in riot gear clashed with demonstrators who hurled stones, set fires, and briefly blocked an interstate highway.

People at the intersection of Trade and Tryon Streets in uptown Charlotte on Wednesday. REUTERS/Jason Miczek

"We are tired of people, especially police, killing our black men," Blanche Penn, a longtime community activist, said at Wednesday evening's rally, where the mood began as resolute but peaceful. "Charlotte has always been quiet. But now it's time to be loud."

Widely differing accounts of Tuesday's shooting emerged the next day. The police said Scott, 43, was armed and ignoring officers' orders when he was gunned down, while the victim's family and a witness said he was holding a book, not a weapon.

Authorities have not released any video of the incident, but the city's mayor said they planned to.

Scott's wife, Rakeyia, issued a statement describing her family as "devastated" and appealing for calm, adding, "we have more questions than answers about Keith's death."

Tuesday's disturbances in Charlotte unfolded as demonstrators in Tulsa, Oklahoma, demanded the arrest of a police officer seen in video last week fatally shooting an unarmed black man who had his hands in clear view at the time.

The deaths were the latest incidents to raise questions of racial bias in US law enforcement, and they stoked a national debate on policing ahead of the presidential election in November. President Barack Obama spoke by telephone on Wednesday with the mayors of Charlotte and Tulsa, a White House official said.

Police officers blocking a road during protests in Charlotte on Tuesday. REUTERS/Adam Rhew/Charlotte Magazine

High-profile killings by the police in New York, Chicago, and Ferguson, Missouri, along with other cities, have sparked more than two years of largely peaceful protests punctuated by days of unrest and arson while giving rise to the Black Lives Matter civil-rights movement.

US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said such killings were unbearable. Her Republican rival, Donald Trump, questioned what the Tulsa officer was thinking in shooting a man he said appeared to pose no imminent threat.

Investigations have been opened in both cities, and the US Justice Department has started a separate investigation into the Oklahoma incident to see whether officers' use of force amounted to a civil-rights violation.

Putney, the Charlotte police chief, said officers had surrounded Scott's car in an apartment complex parking lot Tuesday afternoon after seeing him with a handgun. Scott was shot by a black police officer after Scott exited the car and disregarded orders to drop his weapon, Putney said.

"We did not find a book," Putney told a news conference. "We did find a weapon."

Local resident Taheshia Williams said she saw the incident from her balcony about 100 feet (30 meters) away and watched Scott get out of his car with his hands raised.

"Hands up. No gun. When he got out of the car, a book fell off his lap," Williams told reporters on Wednesday. She said she heard Scott ask the police what he had done wrong, could not hear their reply, then heard four shots.

"It's a cover-up. They made a mistake, and they're doing their best to make sure they cover up that mistake," she said.

Mayor Jennifer Roberts speaking with reporters in Charlotte. REUTERS/Jason Miczek

'Open to showing video'

Black activists and pastors called for an economic boycott of the city, and the American Civil Liberties Union urged the police to release body and dashboard camera footage from the incident.

The police said officer Brentley Vinson was in plainclothes when he shot Scott and was not wearing a body camera.

Mayor Jennifer Roberts told CNN that she had not seen any video from the scene but that Putney told her footage was recorded by cameras worn by other police officers and mounted on patrol cars.

"The chief is very open to showing that video ... not just to elected officials, but also to community leaders," she said. "We have done that in the past. We plan to do that this time."

A man peers through the damage to the Hyatt House hotel in uptown Charlotte, NC that happened during a protest.REUTERS/Jason Miczek

Video of the shooting in Oklahoma, meanwhile, has fueled calls for the arrest of Tulsa police officer Betty Shelby, who is white, for the killing on Friday of Terence Crutcher, 40, whose sport utility vehicle blocked a road after breaking down.

Shelby's lawyer has said she had feared for her life, believing Crutcher was reaching into his vehicle for a weapon. Lawyers for the Crutcher family released still images from police videos showing the car window was shut and said the use of force was not justified.

(Additional Reuters reporting by Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton in Tulsa, Okla., Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, N.C., Emily Flitter in Cleveland, Amanda Becker in Orlando, Fla., and Gina Cherelus and Laila Kearney in New York; Writing by Jon Herskovitz and Daniel Wallis; Editing by James Dalgleish and Alan Crosby)