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Akiel Denkins, a 24-year-old North Carolina man, was shot and killed by police during a foot chase on Monday (Feb. 29) in the city of Raleigh. As authorities in the city contend with rising tensions from protestors, details surrounding the shooting are continuing to develop.

Although there has been an official statement regarding the shooting, witness accounts are conflicting. Raleigh Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown said in her department’s statement that an officer gave chase to Denkins in a Raleigh neighborhood after looking to arrest him for a felony drug offense around noon local time.

During the chase, Denkins was shot but that’s where details start to blur. Chief Deck-Brown said that a weapon was found near the scene where Denkins was gunned down but witnesses offer a different version of events, Raleigh News & Observer reports.

From Raleigh News & Observer:

Truvalia Kearney of Zebulon said she was visiting someone in the neighborhood and was standing near Denkins in front of the store when a police car pulled up. Denkins, Kearney said, “took off running” behind the store and jumped a chain-link fence into the backyard of a house on East Street.

“The officer jumped the fence and fell down,” she said in an interview. “He pulled his gun out and started shooting. He (Denkins) got shot in the back.”

Kearney disputed police reports that Denkins was armed. “That’s a lie because I (saw) it,” she said. “If he had a gun, he didn’t pull it out.”

Louis Rodriguez said he was up on a ladder putting vinyl siding on a home on nearby Garner Road when he heard the commotion.

“I heard somebody say, ‘Stop, stop,’ then I heard, like, six shots,” Rodriguez said. “Then I heard the screams. Man, it was loud.”

The paper named 29-year-old Senior Officer D.C. Twiddy as the cop who gave chase and shot Denkins. Denkins’ mother, Rolanda Byrd, claims that the father of two was unarmed at the time. There was a vigil held at a local church while Byrd and several Raleigh citizens gathered and are still clamoring for answers.

Photo: Facebook