Final report released in Chavis Carter patrol car suicide investigation

JONESBORO, AR - (WMC-TV) – The final report has been released by the Jonesboro Police department in the controversial Chavis Carter patrol car death investigation.

The Jonesboro Police Department tonight has released 76 pages of their final report on Southaven native Chavis Carter's death. We are able to read witness interviews and read the medical examiner's report where the shooting was classified as a suicide.

"When he was sitting in the back of the cop car," answered Brandie Henson, Carter's girlfriend, when asked about the last time she talked to him.

The interview with Henson was released by the Jonesboro Police Department as part of their complete report of Carter's in-custody death, ruled a suicide. Carter called Henson twice that night. The first time saying he had given a false name, the second saying he had a gun and was scared.

"I said are you ok. And he was like yea. I love you. You know just write me," Hensen can be heard to say.

Henson was pregnant and miscarried that night. She told the investigators she found it hard to believe Carter would kill himself knowing she was expecting, though an interview with a man named Robert Canada who knew Carter from their neighborhood shows a different side.

He says Carter was a known drug dealer, but  it's what Carter told him he would do if arrested again that was most revealing, saying in part, "Carter made a statement that if ever arrested again he would kill an officer or kill himself."

Police have also released an interview with the woman who arrived at the scene before Carter was shot, telling officers she was his aunt.

"That's the thing. I don't know him," witness Shakita Barrow-Owens said in the recording.

She wasn't his aunt, instead someone Carter had called from the scene told her to go and check on him. She stayed at the scene and watched.

"I didn't have any communication with him but when he was shaking his head like 'I'm about to go to jail,'" Barrow-Owens said in the recording.

The report also includes an interview with a man who lived by the scene. He told the investigator he saw the moment the officer found Carter shot in the back of the car, then running to tell the other officer at the scene.

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