Walter Scott's Death

Submission 26,894

Part of a series on Police Brutality Controversies. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Walter L. Scott was a 50-year-old African American Coast Guard veteran fatally shot by North Charleston police officer Michael T. Slager while fleeing after a brief tussle during a traffic stop in North Charleston, South Carolina on April 4th, 2015. Following the circulation of video footage showing the shooting in the U.S. news media, Slager was charged with murder on April 7th.

Background

On April 4th, 2015, Walter L. Scott, a 50-year-old Coast Guard veteran and father of four children, was stopped by North Charleston Police Department Officer Michael T. Slager for having a broken taillight on his vehicle. According to the police reports, Scott fled from the routine stop, prompting the officer to chase him into a lot where he first attempted to subdue him with his electronic stun gun, which proved to be unsuccessful, then resorted to fire his weapon eight times, five of which struck Scott. Meanwhile, the shooting was captured on video by a bystander and provided to The Post and Courier and the New York Times for publication on April 7th (shown below).

Notable Developments

Soon after the video clip and the news of the officer's arrest began circulating online, the hashtag #WalterScott began trending worldwide on Twitter, garnering more than 313,320 mentions within the first 24 hours. In addition, the keyword "Walter Scott" topped Google's Trending Searches chart with over 200,000 search queries for the day of April 7th.