Family of Emantic Bradford, Shot Dead by Cops at Alabama Mall, Demands ‘Equal Justice’

The parents of an Alabama man shot dead by police after gunfire erupted at a mall on Thanksgiving night are demanding "equal justice" for their son, insisting he was a good Samaritan who wanted to diffuse the situation, according to ABC News.

Cops originally identified “E.J.” Bradford Jr., 21, as the gunman who shot an 18-year-old and 12-year-old after an altercation at the Riverchase shopping center in Hoover. But on Saturday they admitted Bradford was not the man who fired the fatal shots—although they said he may have been involved in the dispute and was brandishing a weapon when he was killed.

“I'm outraged as a mother because I carried him for nine months,” Bradford's mother, April Pipkins, told ABC News. “As a mother, no one understands how I feel. It's like someone ripped my heart out.”

Bradford's father, Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Sr., said that the police who killed his son “need to be locked up.” Bradford’s family claims police never contacted them, and that they learned of his death from news reports. “That is no way to learn of your child's death,” Pipkins also said. “How would you want to be treated? Nobody should have to go through this, to see their son on TV, on social media.”

Lawyer Benjamin Crump, who previously represented the families of shooting victims Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, said in a press release that Bradford was a veteran who was licensed to carry a concealed firearm. “Equal justice, we plan to get it under the law, because of what they've had to endure,” Crump said in reference to Bradford’s parents.