Aldridge Reed sped toward the hospital while his wife cradled their 28-year-old son in the back seat. Brandon Webster was bleeding out, soaking Towanda Webster-Reed with blood.
“He kept telling me he was dying,” she said. “I kept telling him, ‘No, you’re not leaving me.’ He kept telling Dad that he loved him, and he kept hugging him, and he hugged me and told me he loved me.”
As they reached the hospital, Brandon took what would be his last breath. He was unconscious when a security guard rolled him into the emergency room in a wheelchair.
It was New Year's Day 2019. Minutes earlier, Towanda and Aldridge had been visiting Aldridge’s mother in Shallotte, North Carolina, when their son’s pickup truck raced into their yard next door. The couple ran home and found their son in a chair, blood everywhere. His girlfriend, who had been in the truck with him, said a cop shot him.
North Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper Scott Collins had fired twice at Brandon during a traffic stop in a nearby minimart parking lot. That no one disputes. The controversy was over whether Collins had good reason to shoot. He said he was standing in front of the pickup truck and fired in self-defense when Brandon tried to run him over.
The trooper’s version quickly became the official narrative. The local newspaper ran a story the next day, relying on a Highway Patrol press release, with the headline “Shallotte man shot, dies after trying to ram State Trooper while fleeing traffic stop.”
The state launched criminal and internal disciplinary investigations into Collins’ actions. Months later, the Highway Patrol concluded that Collins had violated no policies. State Attorney General Josh Stein declined to file criminal charges and said the shooting was justified because Collins “reasonably believed” that Brandon Webster was “rapidly accelerating toward” him and “posed an imminent threat of deadly physical force.”
But state officials never disclosed that their own investigations had found evidence clearly contradicting Collins’ version of events. The highway patrol’s analysis of two bullet holes in the driver’s door showed that Collins was to the side of the truck when he fired and not in danger of being run over.
The patrol’s internal affairs investigator later conceded under oath that Collins’ actions had violated the law and multiple department policies. The state agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement with Webster’s family.
In fact, the only people law enforcement ever detained in the case were Brandon’s parents. After Brandon was wheeled into the emergency room, Towanda and Aldridge were sitting on a bench outside the hospital, shellshocked. Sheriff deputies arrived and asked why she was covered in blood. Towanda didn’t answer and went inside to check on her son’s condition.
She never made it to his side. Deputies followed her into the lobby and handcuffed her. They cuffed Aldridge at the curb and locked them in the backs of separate police cars.
“I was praying and asking the Lord to help Brandon,” she said. “Sobbing and crying and wondering what was going on with my son.”
Towanda said she was trapped alone in the car in her bloodied clothes for what seemed like forever but was probably 20 to 30 minutes. She said officers didn’t explain why they were handcuffed.
They were released and went into the ER. The doctors were working on Brandon. Towanda stroked his feet, but her son was already gone.
The story of what really happened that night has never been made public.
‘I’ll shoot you, goddammit’
Brandon Webster, who was Black, grew up in Brunswick County, the southernmost in North Carolina and home to pine forests, swamps, carnivorous plants and popular sandy beaches.
His father, Aldridge Reed, owns a small fleet of 18 wheelers and hauls freight for the military. Towanda Webster-Reed has been a team leader at Walmart for 25 years. Aldridge plays piano at church on Sundays; Towanda sings. They both described their son as having never met a stranger.
Brandon took a shine to driving at an early age: motorcycles, four-wheelers, 18-wheelers, bulldozers, dump trucks, tractors. “Whatever his daddy could drive, he could drive,” Towanda said.
Scott Collins, who is White, grew up in nearby Columbus County in a law enforcement family. His father is a state trooper, as were his uncle and aunt. One grandfather was also a state trooper and later elected sheriff. The other was a sheriff’s deputy. His stepmother works for the local district attorney.
Collins worked as a sheriff’s deputy in Columbus County before joining the Highway Patrol in 2017. He testified in a deposition that he often patrolled the area around the Civietown Mini Mart looking for drunk drivers.
Almost all the evidence in the killing of Brandon Webster is sealed by a federal protective order, which allowed Towanda and Aldridge’s lawyers access, under the condition that it remain confidential. In addition, North Carolina’s public records law keeps nearly all police investigative records hidden. As a result, state investigations of police shootings are never released to the public.
The Marshall Project and The Assembly obtained testimony from depositions in which the Webster family’s lawyer grilled Collins and five other troopers about the evidence. The depositions revealed shoddy policing, special treatment for a police officer at the scene, and a lack of curiosity about physical evidence that contradicted Collins’ account.
At about 9 p.m. on Jan. 1, 2019, Brandon and his girlfriend went out to get snacks for friends and family watching college football at his parents’ house. He stopped at a traffic light a quarter mile down Shell Point Road. When the light turned green, he turned and pulled up to the Civietown Mini Mart.
Collins was parked nearby, lights off. Brandon “fishtailed” his wheels while turning, Collins would later assert, which he considered careless and reckless driving, a misdemeanor that justified the traffic stop.
Collins did not run Brandon’s license plate. He did not turn on his dashboard camera, as his department required. He did not call in the stop to dispatch, or call for backup. Instead, he escalated.
Brandon pulled into a spot facing the store, according to footage from the store’s surveillance camera. Collins, his cruiser’s blue lights flashing, pulled in near the pickup. Brandon put the truck in reverse; Collins, thinking that Brandon was trying to flee, moved his patrol car to block Brandon’s escape route.
Brandon slowly turned so his truck was facing the exit of the parking lot. Collins got out of his car with his gun drawn. He walked around the rear of his patrol car and positioned himself in front of the pickup, pointing his gun at Brandon.
Collins yelled at Brandon to turn off the engine and told bystanders nearby to call 911. He walked toward the driver’s side door. Collins told investigators that he planned to break Brandon’s window with his flashlight to see if he had a gun.
Brandon edged the truck forward. Collins retreated a few steps toward the front corner of the truck, and Brandon halted.
“Stop, I’ll shoot you, goddammit, stop!” Collins screamed. The trooper stepped toward the driver again. Brandon then drove past the trooper, and Collins fired twice at the driver’s side of the car. One bullet lodged in the door. The second punctured the weatherstripping and shattered the window.
“I was standing directly in front of that vehicle when he lunged at me and when he began to spin the tires in my direction,” Collins told investigators two weeks after the shooting. “His front tires were turned directly toward me, and I was scared for my life, I knew I was fixing to die, and that’s when I made my decision to shoot.”
But the state’s analysis of the evidence undercut his account. A week after Brandon’s killing, four troopers performed tests on the truck to determine the path of the bullets and the locations of the shooter and victim. Among other tests, the troopers inserted long wooden dowels in the bullet holes and ran the photos through specialized software. The reconstruction report found that Collins was out of the path of travel and on the side of the truck when he fired both shots.
In addition to firing when he was no longer in danger, Collins violated two policies that have been standard practice in policing for decades, said Seth Stoughton, an expert on police use of force at the University of South Carolina Law School. Stoughton reviewed the security camera and cell phone videos at the request of The Marshall Project and The Assembly.
First, when Collins left the protection of his vehicle and walked in front of the truck, he broke a rule of policing that officers must avoid getting in the path of a running vehicle. There is no benefit to doing so, only risk, Stoughton said. An officer’s body can’t stop a car, but the vehicle can injure or kill them.
Secondly, he said, officers should avoid shooting at moving vehicles when the vehicle itself is the only weapon involved. A bullet won’t stop a car, but it can hit passengers and bystanders. And shooting the driver risks turning a moving vehicle into an unguided missile.
Officers in Collins’ situation should get a good look at the driver, write down the license plate and get an arrest warrant at the courthouse, Stoughton said. “Then pick him up on the outstanding warrant for fleeing,” he said. “It happens all the time, not a big deal, and nobody gets shot.”
Fleeing to elude arrest is a Class 1 misdemeanor in North Carolina with a maximum punishment of 150 days in jail.
Tale of two crime scenes
The second shot Collins fired went through Brandon’s left arm before piercing his lungs and severing his esophagus from his stomach.
The internal bleeding was massive. The hospital staff administered five units of blood and multiple IVs to no avail; they declared Brandon dead at 10:28 p.m., about an hour and a half after he’d left home to buy snacks.
After Towanda and Aldridge were let out of the patrol cars and uncuffed, investigators kept them apart while waiting for agents from the State Bureau of Investigation, which investigates most police shootings in North Carolina.
Officers searched Towanda’s car and purse. When it started raining, she said they set up a tent and continued. They asked whether Brandon used or sold drugs, she said, and if he was a gang member.
Towanda and Aldridge arrived home hours later to find a crime scene. Yellow tape rimmed their yard and house. The volunteer fire department lit the yard almost as bright as day with its fire truck. Agents photographed inside the house and around the yard. They removed the panels inside Brandon’s truck to look for bullet casings.
“So how are you looking for bullet casings?” Towanda asked. “He didn't shoot anybody.”
Police had also established a crime scene at the minimart. Over the next few hours, Collins and his attorney were granted access to evidence and the crime scene that civilians under investigation aren’t afforded.
Collins and a colleague went inside the store, where they watched the security camera video of the shooting. Collins testified that he watched the footage “to be able to explain what happened better to my supervisor when he arrived on scene.”
Collins asked his colleague to call his father, who came to the scene. He also requested that someone call his lawyer at the Police Benevolent Association.
Two hours after the shooting, before SBI agents showed up to examine the scene, defense attorney James Payne arrived. The Benevolent Association had retained him as Collins’ lawyer. Crime scenes are typically restricted to investigators, first responders and other officials. This prevents crime scenes from being contaminated. Yet Payne, a private attorney, and Collins, a potential suspect, went inside the yellow tape and inspected the crime scene for about 15 minutes, according to Collins’ testimony.
“That is not kosher, that is not okay,” said Stoughton, the expert on police tactics and a former officer. “I can't imagine that happening if it was anyone other than a cop.” This shows a double standard, allowing police special access to align their narrative with physical evidence since criminal defense attorneys can’t enter crime scenes if their client is a suspect, he said.
Scott Collins did not respond to phone calls, emails and certified mail with questions and detailed findings in the article. Payne declined to comment.
‘A bitter pill’
About three months after the shooting, Towanda and Aldridge met with Leslie Dismukes, who was then the criminal bureau chief at the state Department of Justice.
Dismukes said Collins was not at fault. Towanda said Dismukes told her she relied on incriminating statements from Brandon’s girlfriend. Towanda asked to watch the video of the girlfriend’s interrogation. After watching, she said there were no such incriminating statements. A family lawyer present at the meeting, Ryan Smithwick, also said the girlfriend made no incriminating statements.
On the way home from the meeting, Towanda said friends called her to say that TV news was reporting that Collins wasn’t being charged.
Dismukes, who now leads the state’s Department of Adult Correction, declined to answer questions, saying details of criminal investigations are confidential under state law. Several legal experts told The Marshall Project/The Assembly that state law only prohibits the release of records, not discussion of them. Stein, who is now governor, did not respond to questions.
The reconstruction report was the most scientific piece of evidence in the case, but the Highway Patrol and the attorney general made no mention of it in clearing Collins.
Towanda and Aldridge sued Collins in December 2020, saying he falsely stated Brandon tried to run him over and that he was in front of the truck when he fired his weapon. “Collins would not have stopped, threatened or killed Webster if he was White,” the lawsuit asserted.
Three years after the shooting, Bradley Bannon, the lawyer for Towanda and Aldridge, confronted Collins and his fellow officers in depositions with the reconstruction report, videos and other evidence. Bannon had hired expert witnesses to analyze the evidence and testify if the case came to trial. After deposing the troopers, he wondered whether to call them as witnesses because their testimony was so favorable to Towanda and Aldridge’s case.
For example, Lt. Michael Whaley, the lead internal affairs investigator, made a series of admissions under oath. He said it was normal for Police Benevolent Association lawyers to inspect crime scenes. He also said that police should not point guns at people suspected of minor traffic violations, as Collins did, according to a transcript of the deposition.
When the lawyer walked Whaley step by step through Collins’ testimony, he admitted that the trooper’s account was inconsistent with the patrol’s own reconstruction report. As he watched the security video second by second, Whaley testified that Brandon never accelerated toward Collins. He said that shooting from beside the truck through the driver’s door violated patrol policy and state law.
Despite these contradictions, Whaley said he had never confronted Collins about the discrepancies between his account and the physical evidence. Whaley did not respond to emails, phone calls or certified letters with detailed questions. Neither did former Lt. Col. Vic Ward, who made the final decision to clear Collins.
This manner of investigation — comfort the suspect, investigate the victim — is unique to police shootings, said Bannon, who practiced criminal defense law for 20 years before turning to civil rights litigation.
The treatment of Brandon and his family after the shooting was “obviously designed to explore any kind of wrongdoing or evidence that the victim of this shooting had done something wrong, or was responsible himself for being shot and killed,” Bannon said. “In the other investigation, they're doing whatever they can on that end to protect the shooter.”
Towanda said she saw this playbook repeated in the January killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer walked across the path of travel of Good’s vehicle and shot the mother of three from the side of the car. Trump administration officials immediately labeled Good a domestic terrorist, claiming she had tried to run over the agent, who then fired in self-defense.
“She was not trying to run him over,” Towanda said. The agent “was just pissed because she was going to drive away. And that's the same thing I saw with my son.”
Towanda said they had had “the talk” with Brandon many times, about how a Black male should behave during a traffic stop. He’d been stopped several times before with no problems. But she’s convinced he was frightened by a trooper who immediately pulled out his gun. Brandon was trying to get away, not run someone over, she said.
“If he wanted to, he would have,” she said. “The boy's been driving forever.”
In 2023, the Highway Patrol settled the family’s lawsuit, agreeing to pay $2.2 million to Brandon’s three children. The money has been put in irrevocable trusts that will support them for decades. As is typical, the settlement document says the money is not an admission of wrongdoing.
For Towanda, no amount of money will make up for her grandchildren losing their father. Brandon Jr. was just a year old at the time. He has no memories of his father; his knowledge has been formed by stories, photos and answers to his many questions about his dad. There are many moments when his father’s absence is conspicuous.
Recently, Brandon Jr.’s school had a dance for kids and parents. When she heard about the event, Towanda flushed with rage knowing Brandon wouldn’t be there. His younger brother stepped in to take his nephew, and the anger passed.
But Towanda said she knows it will return.
“It’s a bitter pill to swallow,” she said. “I never know when it’s going to pop up.”