The Parents Of Walter Scott Say "Justice Will Be Served" Following The Release Of Cellphone Video

Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon was meeting with protesters at the site of the demonstration and trying to keep the peace.

Meanwhile, North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey and Police Chief Eddie Driggers paid condolences to Scott’s distraught parents.

Scott, his dad said, “looked like he was trying to kill a deer running through the woods.”

“They would have swept it under the rug like they have with many others,” Walter Scott Sr. told NBC’s “Today” show earlier Wednesday. “And I thank God that this young man, whoever it was, had the video...When I saw it, I just fell off my feet and my heart was broken.”

The dead man’s mom called the disturbing footage that resulted in the arrest of North Charleston Officer Michael Slager “the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.

“I almost couldn’t look at it, to see my son running defenselessly, being shot,” Judy Scott said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “It just tore my heart to pieces.”

Slager, 33, was charged with murder Tuesday after video of the fatal shooting was released by the Scott family’s lawyer — and appeared to contradict the account the officer gave to his superiors, including his claim that he “feared for his life.”

The FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division are also now investigating the killing of Scott, who was shot five times — four times in the back, once in the ear.

Slager, who faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted, remains jailed without bond.

The fatal encounter began at 9:30 a.m. Saturday when Slager pulled over Scott, a 50-year-old father of four who had served in the U.S. Coast Guard, for a broken brake light.

Slager claimed he opened fire after he struggled with Scott and that the victim ran off with his Taser.

The video, however, told a different tale.

In it, Scott — dressed in a green shirt and jeans — was seen running away and at least 15 feet from Slager when the officer fired the first of eight shots.

“Shots fired!” Slager said into his radio as he closed in on Scott.

Then, as Slager circled Scott, who was lying face down and not moving, he shouted, “Put your hands behind your back!”

Slager then cuffed the Scott’s hands before jogging back to where he had been before and picking something off the ground.

By then another cop had arrived at the scene and when Slager returned to Scott, he dropped an object — apparently the stun gun — by his body.

The police report stated responding officers performed CPR on Scott. There was no sign of anybody performing CPR on Scott in the video.

Scott had been arrested 10 times in the past, mostly for not paying child support. Back in 1987, he was busted on an assault and battery charge and convicted in 1991 of possession of a bludgeon, The Post and Courier newspaper In Charleston, S.C., reported.

But relatives said Scott was not a violent man. And his killing stirred memories of the fatal Brown shooting and the chokehold death of Eric Garner on Staten Island at the hands of an NYPD officer.

Many of the demonstrators complained that North Charleston’s mostly white police force routinely harasses the city’s mostly black residents for minor offenses.

“After watching the video, the senseless shooting and taking of Walter Scott’s life was absolutely unnecessary and avoidable,” U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) wrote on Twitter late Tuesday.

“When you're wrong, you're wrong," Summey said at a news conference Tuesday in announcing the charge. "And if you make a bad decision, don't care if you're behind the shield or just a citizen on the street, you have to live by that decision."

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