An 11-year-old boy in Mississippi is recovering after being shot by an officer responding to the 911 call he made to protect his mother.
Aderrien Murry was released from the hospital on Wednesday after he was shot in the chest by an Indianola Police Department officer early Saturday morning, CNN reports. The officer, identified as Greg Capers, was responding to a domestic disturbance call the child made involving his Nakala Murry and the father of one of her children.
Murry said she was concerned when the father of her child showed up at her home at 4 am in an “irate” state and told Aderrien to call the police. She recalls Capers arriving at the home with “his gun drawn at the front door and asked those inside the home to come outside.”
It was when Aderrien was walking around the corner of a hallway when the officer fired the shot.
“Once he came from around the corner, he got shot,” Murry said. “I cannot grasp why. The same cop that told him to come out of the house. (Aderrien) did, and he got shot.
“He kept asking, ‘Why did he shoot me? What did I do wrong?’” she added.
She recalls the shooting taking place about “one to two minutes” after the officer asked everyone in the house to come outside. Two other children, including Murry’s daughter and 2-year-old nephew, were in the house at the time of the shooting.
Aderrien was taken to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson where he was given a chest tube and placed on a ventilator. He had a collapsed lung, fractured ribs, and a lacerated liver because of the shooting, his mother said.
Protests have erupted in the wake of the shooting, via CBS News, with Murry’s family demanding the officer be fired. However, Capers has been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation.
Body camera footage was also denied due to the ongoing investigation, an attorney said.
“Aderrien came within an inch of losing his life,” attorney Carlos Moore said. “It’s not OK for a cop to do this and get away with this.”
“The mother asked Aderrien to call the police on her daughter’s father. He walked out of his room as directed by the police and he got shot.”
Indianola Mayor Ken Featherstone is promising full transparency in the official probe with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, HuffPost reports.