In police killing of Andrew Brown, a national crisis comes to a small NC town
ELIZABETH CITY -- A day later, dried blood still stained the sidewalk along Roanoke Avenue and glass from the car remained in the crepe myrtle in the front yard. Michael Gordon’s grandkids often played there, and now a small piece of yellow police tape lingered on the ground near the steps to his porch. Above the numbers next to his front door was a small hole where a bullet entered.
Gordon left home Wednesday morning and returned not long after to a crime scene. He did not see what happened but the aftermath was seared into his mind: the car with the back window shot out, crashed into a tree; the body on the ground, covered with a sheet; the yellow tape wrapped around his house. Andrew Brown Jr. was the neighbor across the street, a man Gordon had known for decades.
Now Brown was dead next to Gordon’s driveway, another Black man whose life ended after an encounter with police. Brown, 42, died less than 24 hours after a Minneapolis police officer was convicted in the murder of George Floyd, whose death a year ago under that officer’s knee ignited a nationwide reckoning with police treatment of Black people.
For a fleeting moment, the conviction of Derek Chauvin brought a sense of relief to many around the country. “And then the next day for this to happen in my hometown is really heartbreaking,” Gabriel Adkins, an Elizabeth City councilman, said during an interview on Friday. Moments earlier, Adkins greeted about 100 protesters who’d gathered outside Elizabeth City’s city hall, the origin point for days of marching after Brown’s death.
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