It really should have been obvious from the very beginning yesterday afternoon, if we had been paying attention, and journalists were doing their jobs as skeptics looking for facts, instead of a click-bait-driving narrative.

After Keith Scott was shot and killed by a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) team attempting to serve a warrant on another person yesterday, his family concocted a tale of a man who was unjustly executed by police for no reason at all.

They said he only had a book.

They claimed he didn’t have a gun.

They claimed that he was tased, then shot four times by plainclothes officers who ran up on him with guns drawn, and that they yelled “Gun!”and murdered him.

Then they claimed all white people were devils, and responsible for his death.

But Keith Lamont Scott was not shot by a white officer.

He was shot and killed by an African-American CMPD officer.

There was no book nearby.

And there was a gun, which other witnesses in the apartment complex admit seeing in Scott’s hands as officers warned him repeatedly to put it down.

Scott’s family apparently made up their story about how he died as they went along.

Keith Lamont Scott was not approached by a solitary officer in plainclothes, or even a group of plainclothes officers.

Scott was approached by three uniformed CMPD officers, and a fourth officer wearing street clothes and a CMPD-issued vest emblazoned with the word “POLICE” in bold letters.

It was a vest just like this this.

There were three uniformed officers and a fourth officer wearing a department-issued vest with a badge displayed, so there was no doubt whom Keith Lamont Scott was facing.

Not only were there four officers in this warrant team who were in uniform or displaying badges and police issue armor and who identified themselves in front of witnesses, they reportedly gave him numerous warnings to drop the gun.

Charlotte police warned 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott again and again to drop his handgun before an officer shot and killed him, the police chief announced Wednesday morning, after riots damaged patrol cars and injured at least 16 officers, one of whom was hit in the face with a rock.

Police Chief Kerr Putney said during a news conference that officers were searching for a suspect Tuesday when they saw Scott exit a vehicle with a handgun at an apartment complex on the city’s northeast side. “The officers gave loud, clear verbal commands which were also heard by many of the witnesses. They were instructing the subject, once he got out of the vehicle, to drop the weapon… Mr. Scott exited his vehicle armed with a handgun as the officers continued to yell at him to drop it.”

Putney said Officer Brentley Vinson shot Scott because the man posed a threat. Vinson is black, as was Scott.

“It’s time to change the narrative, because I can tell you from the facts that the story’s a little bit different as to how it’s been portrayed so far, especially through social media,” Putney said.

Because of the lies of Keith Lamont Scott’s racist, dishonest, and vicious family on social media there were more than a dozen people injured in riots last night. Vehicles were stopped on highways, their innocent occupants terrorized, and their cargoes looted.

Arson was committed.

A city was held hostage.

All because Keith Lamont Scott wouldn’t put his hands up, and police were forced to shoot, and his family simply could not be honest about what really occurred.

Update: That’s a funny looking book Keith Lamont Scott was reading.

BREAKING: CMPD sources confirm this photo I obtained of the shooting aftermath shows the weapon Keith Scott was holding. @wsoctv pic.twitter.com/aBMRBUUjjz

— Joe Bruno (@JoeBrunoWSOC9) September 21, 2016