Aderrien Murry.Photo:Courtesy of Nakala Murry via the The Cochran Firm
Courtesy of Nakala Murry via the The Cochran Firm
Now the officer who shot and wounded the unarmed boy while responding to a domestic dispute at the boy’s home on May 20 has been suspended without pay, theAssociated Pressreports.
On Monday night, the Indianola Board of Aldermen voted 4 to 1 to stop Sgt. Greg Capers from being paid, board member Marvin Elder said,the AP and WLBTreport. Before Monday’s meeting, Capers had been suspended with pay, according to the AP.
Nakala Murry, whose son,Aderrien Murry,was shot in the chest, says this is a good first-step but would like more to be done. She would like Capers to be fired and charged criminally.
“This should not have happened,” she tells PEOPLE. “I never imagined a phone call for help would lead to my son almost dying.”
“This was very, very scary for me and my family,“Aderrientells PEOPLE. “I thought I was going to die.”
“It’s not right,” he adds.
On May 20, Nakala quietly asked Aderrien, who was in his room, to call 911 when her daughter’s father was arguing with her, she says.
“He was irate, and I was trying to defuse the situation before it escalated,” Nakala says.
The soon-to-be-sixth grader called 911 and then, at his mother’s request, texted his grandmother, asking her to come over. When police arrived, they knocked at the door and then began kicking it, according to Nakala.
“My hinges were off and everything,” she says.
“Once I opened the door, [the officer] had his gun pointed at me saying, ‘Come out the house,’” she says.
Nakala says she followed orders and exited her house.
“By the time I made it to the end of my driveway where my mom was, I heard a gunshot,” Nakala says. “I seen my son running towards me.”
After Nakala exited her home, the officer ordered everyone still inside to come out with their hands up. Police had already asked Nakala if anyone inside had a gun and she said no, she says.
“I felt pain but didn’t realize I got shot,” says Aderrien, who is 4’10.
He ran out of the house and toward his mother. As he got closer to her, she could see darkness spreading on his red shirt.
“By the time he made it to me, he was bleeding, [and had] blood in his mouth,” she says.
“I was terrified when I seen him shot,” she continued. “The first thing I was screaming other than, ‘who shot him?’ and ‘what happened?’ was, ‘what side is the heart on?’ I couldn’t think straight.”
Once she realized he had been shot on the right side of his chest, not on the left where his heart is, she calmed down enough to help her son.
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“I didn’t have time to be scare,” Nakala says. “I just knew I had to keep talking to him. I prayed because that’s what I know. My faith is strong in God.”
Trying to stay strong for her son, Nakala says she lay him down on the ground and held him as she put pressure on his gushing wound to stem the bleeding until the ambulance arrived.
When Aderrien realized he’d been shot, he says he started saying sorry to his family for anything he’d done to them and to his teacher “for kind of acting up” in class.
“I felt scared for my life,” he says.
His mother tried not to cry in front of him when he became emotional. “He kept saying he didn’t want to die,” she says. “He started singing and praying and giving apologies to people he felt like he was wrong to.”
Aderrien was rushed to a local hospital and then airlifted to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson after his lung collapsed, Nakala says. He also suffered from a lacerated liver and fractured ribs after the bullet went through his chest and out of his back, Aderrien says.
Nakala felt sick when she heard her son scream in pain when medical personnel inserted a tub in his chest so that he could be placed on a ventilator. “The pain was bad,” he says. “I couldn’t walk.”
He was released from the hospital on May 24. “This is the craziest thing that has ever happened to me,” he says.
Lasting Trauma
Ever since the shooting, Aderrien has had flashbacks about the shooting and panic attacks.
Nakala says “his stress level” has been high since the shooting. When he heard that noise, “he shot out of the house so fast. He had a panic attack. He thought somebody was in the house.”
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is looking into the case. Capers has not been charged with any crime at this time.
Nakala has filed a federal lawsuit seeking at least $5 million against the Indianola Police Chief, Capers and the town of Indianola, the AP reports. The lawsuit maintains that the town failed to properly train Capers and that he used excessive force, according to the outlet.
Recalling the night of the shooting, she says, “So, you’re asking [people in the house] to come out, if anyone is in the home, and to come out with your hands up. But soon as you see a person come out, shoot. I’m not understanding that.”
“He was obedient,” she adds. “He came out with his hands up.”
The Murry family attorney, Carlos Moore, did not respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.
“Sgt Capers is glad that the child is recovering and is very sorry that this happened," the statement adds. “He expresses his deepest sympathy to the family.”
As for Aderrien, he is looking forward to summer as he is healing from his injuries.
Instead, he says, “I want to become a doctor.”
AGoFundMehas been set up to help his family defray his medical expenses.
source: people.com
