White lawyer 'shoots wife dead after taking out gun during Black Lives Matter protest'

Claud 'Tex' McIver shot his wife in the back after their car hit a bump in the road, a friend of the couple says

The Black Lives Matter movement has taken off across the world in response to the perceived treatment of black people by police (AFP/Getty Images)

A white lawyer in the US accidentally shot his wife dead after taking out a gun because he feared they would be carjacked during a Black Lives Matter protest, a friend of the couple has said.

Claud “Tex” McIver was travelling in the backseat of a car behind his wife Diane as a chauffeur drove them home in Atlanta, Georgia.

The friend, Bill Crane, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Mr McIver had taken a gun from the glove compartment because he was concerned about protesters nearby.

Mr Crane said the couple had been approached by several people from the protest while in the car just before the incident on 25 September.

He said the .38 calibre revolver accidentally went off, hitting his wife in the back, when their car hit a bump in the road.

He also told local news channel WGCL the gun accidentally discharged when Mr McIver removed it from a plastic bag.

Ms McIver, 63, died later in hospital.

Atlanta Police issued a statement saying the shooting was “more complicated” than Mr Crane’s account suggested.

They said Mr Crane “wasn’t in the car, so he is not a witness to what happened. We are going to wait and see what all the witnesses have to say.”

Mr McIver, a prominent lawyer in the area, has not been arrested.

The police were critcised for taking Ms McIver to a hospital four-and-a-half miles from the scene when there was one half a mile away.

The Black Lives Matter movement began after 17-year-old black youth Trayvon Martin was shot dead in Florida in 2013 by George Zimmerman, and has grown following a number of fatal shootings of black men by police in questionable circumstances.