Atlantic City officers cleared in fatal shooting of Shawn Brown

Shawn Brown, 20, was armed and pointed a gun at police before plainclothes detectives shot him Sept. 9, 2014, according to evidence presented to the grand jury.

Mayor Don Guardian and police Chief Henry White declined to comment on the grand jury decision Tuesday night.

Brown was shot three times, an autopsy showed: once in the chest, once in the back and once in the bottom of his spine.

Despite the grand jurors’ decision, residents in the area were unconvinced that Brown should have been shot.

His family filed a $10 million federal lawsuit earlier this month against the city and the police officers.

“I don’t even think he had a gun,” Jimmy Sess said as he sat on the porch of his Drexel Avenue home Tuesday evening, just steps from a memorial marking where Brown fell.

Atlantic County Prosecutor Jim McClain’s office released video stills that show a man identified as Brown with a gun in his right hand.

When shown those photos, Sess shook his head.

“Just because he had a gun doesn’t mean they had to shoot him,” he said. “Why aren’t they worried about all these kids having guns? I’m a grown man, 46 years old, and I don’t have a gun.”

Brown dropped the silver and black semiautomatic handgun after he was shot, McClain said.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms national database linked that gun to three prior shootings, McClain said, but he did not provide details. Forensics also matched shell casings found near the Cedar Market that day to the gun.

It was gunshots in that area that drew the detectives’ attention that day. In the area with a witness, they called in the shots about 12:55 p.m. and asked for confirmation. They found that the city’s ShotSpotter audio gunshot detection system had registered 11 shots within four seconds.

The officers then got in their unmarked car and started looking for the suspect, according to a statement from McClain’s office. The officers saw someone they knew, who indicated a man walking down the street, later identified as Brown, was the suspect.

They watched as Brown turned and walked down an alley off Mediterranean Avenue. As one of the officers radioed in, Brown turned and looked at them, then ran down Georgia Avenue.

The officers said they saw Brown take a handgun from his waistband.

As they followed him, the officers called out that they were police, McClain said. As they got out of their vehicle, one of the officers saw him point the gun at them and fired four to seven rounds, according to the report.

As he fell, Brown dropped the handgun, which landed about a foot or two away from him, McClain said.

That officer and another then yelled for Brown not to move, but he tried to get up. Believing he was going for the gun, the two officers fired more shots at him.

“I’m done, I’m done,” Brown told the one officer as he approached, pushing away from the gun, McClain said.

The officer called for an ambulance to be expedited.

In a federal lawsuit, Brown’s family claimed his constitutional rights were violated and he could have been saved, but the officers did not seek medical attention quickly enough.

Four minutes after the shots-fired call at 12:55, Brown had been shot and an ambulance called, according to call logs. Emergency medical personnel arrived on scene five minutes later.

Brown was pronounced dead at 2:16 p.m.

Video stills from the Boys & Girls Club show a man in a blue-and-white striped shirt with a blue bucket hat on reaching for what appears to be a gun, other photos show a gun in his right hand, which is by his side.

One of the officers saw him take off the shirt and hat, which were later recovered.

Another video from a home on Drexel Avenue shows Brown running without the shirt just before the shooting. None of the video was released, and there is no video of the actual shooting.

“The reason they don’t want to show the video is because he did not have a gun,” said Michael Scott Jr., who knew Brown. “Justice has been denied.”

Scott said Brown’s mother, Rose, had worked hard to keep her kids out of trouble, and that Brown was just getting ready to start a job at the time of the shooting.

Brown had been part of Atlantic City’s Youth Advocacy Programs for two months, Director Lamont Fauntleroy said last year. A few years ago, Brown was also part of the group’s Males Engaged in Reducing Violence through Gainful Employment, or MERGE.

But the prosecutor said at the time of the shooting, Brown was facing indictment for unlawful possession and distribution of heroin. He had 40 bags of heroin on him when he was killed.

“He was a good kid,”Scott said. “He came out of a great home.”

Contact: 609-272-7257

LCohen@pressofac.com

Twitter @LyndaCohen