Family: Cop Shot Black Boy 'for No Reason'

A Mississippi family is calling for charges against a police officer who they say shot an 11-year-old boy "for no reason." Aderrien Murry's mother asked him to call police around 4am Saturday when a man with whom she's connected showed up at the family's Indianola home "irate," CNN reports. A responding police officer "had his gun drawn at the front door and asked those inside the home to come outside," says Aderrien's mother, Nakala Murry. She says the officer—identified as Greg Capers, who was named the police department's "best officer," per Mississippi Today—shot her son in the chest as he rounded a corner, entering the living room. "I cannot grasp why," she adds, per CNN. "[Aderrien] kept asking, 'Why did he shoot me? What did I do wrong?'"

Murry tells Newsweek that her son didn't pose a threat and had "nothing in his hands." He "came within an inch of losing his life" for simply having "walked out of his room as directed," family attorney Carlos Moore tells CNN. The boy suffered a collapsed lung, lacerated liver, and fractured ribs and was placed on a ventilator. He was released from the hospital on Wednesday. Capers—who, like Aderrien, is Black, per Newsweek—remains with the Indianola Police Department. The Indianola Board of Aldermen voted Monday to place him on paid administrative leave, but the family says he should be fired, along with Police Chief Ronald Sampson. They also want Capers charged with attempted murder. "It's not OK for a cop to do this and get away with this," Moore tells CNN.

The lawyer claims Capers wasn't disciplined after using a stun gun on a handcuffed man in December. "If he's your best, Indianola, you need a clean house from top to bottom," Moore says, per Mississippi Today. Murry feels further violated by police, as the man who showed up at her home was taken into custody later Saturday but then released because she hadn't filed a police report against him. "When was I going to have time to do that? I was in the hospital with my son," she tells CNN. Police have denied the family's request to release body camera footage of the shooting, citing "an ongoing investigation," says Moore. Over the weekend, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said it is "gathering evidence" and will hand its report to the state attorney general's office once complete. (More police shooting stories.)