'He didn't deserve to die like that:' Family seeks answers in police shooting of Gastonia man

Jason Lipscomb didn't deserve to die.

That was the refrain on the lips of his friends and family, around 30 people who gathered at his family's apartment complex to pay their respects on Thursday evening.

Robert Hamlett, Lipscomb's stepfather, said that he had raised his 21-year-old stepson from the time he was 6.

"He wasn't perfect. He's just like any other 21-year-old," Hamlett said. "But he didn't deserve to die like that."

He said his wife, Lipscomb's mother, is barely speaking. At the vigil, she sat in  silence, listening, her grief etched across her face.

"I never knew pain like this existed," Hamlett said, at times speaking through tears.

Lipscomb was shot on Wednesday by police at 12:53 p.m. at The Meadows apartment complex on the 400 block of North Edgemont Avenue. A surveillance video depicting the fatal shooting showed several police officers and Gaston County Sheriff's deputies chasing Lipscomb down the street. Lipscomb climbed into a car and backed up.

One of the officers toward the front of the car appears to go to the ground as the car backs up. Another officer at the back of the car also gets struck, backs up and stumbles. He was not injured, police said.

Lipscomb then begins driving forward, and police — who posted their own version of the video — said that Lipscomb ran over the officer who was still on the ground as he tried to drive away. The officer was admitted to the hospital with leg injuries.

As the car moves forward, away from the officers, in an apparent attempt to drive away, officers open fire, firing more than a dozen times.

Police were responding to a report that Lipscomb had "kidnapped" children he knew, picking them up from a local daycare and going to his stepfather and mother's home.

His family and friends feel that this portrayal is unfair. They pointed out that Lipscomb wasn't a stranger to the children, and Hamlett said when someone called asking for the children, Lipscomb said to come get them. When police arrived, the children were found unharmed inside an apartment.

"Jason was more than a person that made mistakes," Hamlett said. "Everybody is different. People grow differently. Jason did not deserve to get murdered like that."

Brooklyn Adams, a close friend of Lipscomb's, said that as children, she and Lipscomb would sit on the blacktop and joke with one another.

"If you knew Jason, you knew you was gonna laugh. Jason was the funniest person. It didn't matter what you was going through. It didn't matter what he was going through," she said. "I went to school with Jason from kindergarten all the way up. He didn't deserve this. He's not that type of person."

"It makes me so angry," she said, adding that she had heard the reports that Jason kidnapped the children.

"He's not that person," she said. "Anybody that Jason encountered, he literally … loved. He was one of the people that just: come on. I take you as you are. No matter how you are, he took you."

Candy Chamliss, another friend, said that when she met Lipscomb, he introduced himself using a nickname: Hollywood.

"He looked at me and he said, 'who are you?' I said, 'I'm Candy. Who are you?' He puts on his shades, and he says, 'I'm Hollywood,'" she said.

Lydia McCaskill, a local activist, also spoke at the vigil, asking for police transparency and saying that she felt Lipscomb's race played a role in how he was treated by police.

"Y'all don't want to make this about Black and white, but I'm going to need y'all to wake the [expletive] up," she said.

"This is about Black and white. This is about the fact that police approach Black people differently than they approach white people."

Reporter Kara Fohner can be reached at 704-869-1850 or at kfohner@gannett.com. Support local journalism by subscribing here.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Gastonia family seeks answers in police shooting of unarmed Black man