Officer won’t face charges in Alabama mall shooting

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama police officer will not face charges for killing a man he mistook for the gunman in a mall shooting, the state’s attorney general announced Tuesday.

His announcement drew outrage from the slain man’s family, who said the o cer jumped to conclusions when he saw a young black man with a gun.

An o cer shot 21-yearold Emantic “EJ” Bradford, Jr. while responding to an earlier shooting on Thanksgiving night at a mall in Hoover, Alabama.

Attorney General Steve Marshall announced Tuesday that his investigation concluded “the o cer did not commit a crime” and that he would not present the case to a grand jury. Marshall said he considered the matter closed.

A 26-page report released by Marshall’s o ce said the o cer mistakenly believed Bradford fired the earlier shots. But the report also said the Hoover officer, whose name has not been released, was still justified in shooting him because of the threat he posed.

The report said the o cer saw Bradford running toward the scene with a gun and believed he was trying to kill the wounded shooting victim or harm others. The shooting victim was actually Bradford’s friend, with whom he had been at the mall that evening.

“A reasonable person could have assumed that the only person with a gun who was running toward the victim of a shooting that occurred just three seconds earlier fired the shots,” the report found.

The report also stated that Bradford, who had a gun drawn, “posed an immediate deadly threat to persons in the area.”

Marshall released two 10-second clips from surveillance cameras at the shopping mall. The video shows an o cer shooting Bradford from behind as Bradford is running. An autopsy found that Bradford was shot three times: once in back of the head, once in his neck and once in his lower back, according to the report.

The report said that the officer told investigators that he did not turn on his body camera from standby mode because there was “no time.”

The report also said it was “unclear” if verbal commands were issued for Bradford to stop running. The o cer told investigators he did not issue verbal commands, although two witnesses said they heard them, the report stated.

Bradford’s family reacted with anger to the attorney general’s conclusions.

“The attorney general, he’s in bed with Hoover. Bottom line. He covered it up. He sanitized it just so the o cer could get o with murdering my son,” Emantic Bradford Sr. told news reporters.

Ben Crump, an attorney representing the family, said his clients “will have their day in court.”

“The police shot, we believe, because they feared a black man with a gun,” Crump said.

Crump said the video shows Bradford “did nothing wrong” and that the young man drew his gun to protect his friends.

“He was really the hero in all of this,” Bradford’s mother, April Pipkins, told reporters.

The officer-involved shooting sparked weeks of protests during the Christmas shopping season in the city heavily dependent on retail sales.