Melissa Brock sees her daughter’s face when she closes her eyes.

She still gets anxious on the road, anticipating the worst as cars speed and swerve in and out of traffic. She wonders if someone will hurt her.

"I think, 'Oh boy, here we go,' " Brock said.

Her fears are validated by tragedy. The day she was called to Eskenazi Hospital. The moment she identified her daughter's body. The time she has spent toiling on her behalf, only to feel deprived of justice, of closure.

“It’s a whole different realm of grieving and bereavement,” Brock told IndyStar. “I never would have imagined this if I didn’t live it every day myself. There (are) no words to describe it.”

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Brock's daughter, Brandy, 31, was a passenger in a car when she was shot and killed during an apparent road-rage encounter on the east side in September. Both drivers allegedly fired guns, according to court documents, but the person who fired the first shot, not the fatal round, is the one facing criminal charges.

Andrew Holder, 47, is expected to stand trial in the spring, his attorney told IndyStar.

Days after the shooting, Marion County prosecutors told IndyStar that the driver who killed Brandy Brock during the incident won’t face any charges because it was self-defense. Authorities believe the driver fired after Holder, who was driving the car Brock was in, shot at him, which would mean he’s protected under Indiana law, prosecutors said.

Holder was charged with criminal recklessness and carrying a handgun without a license. But whether Holder is convicted, acquitted or pleads out, the case's conclusion likely won’t amount to justice for Melissa Brock because no one was charged with her daughter’s death.

“I could never say I was angry at any person,” Melissa Brock said. “But (I’m) more angry with the system for failing my daughter and her rights as a human being. I feel like she was thrown away and discarded, like her life wasn’t important.”

The shooting

Brandy Brock, a mother of two young girls, had a group of friends who she could depend on to help her out in difficult situations. They'd give her a ride or take her daughters to get food. Melissa Brock called them her daughter's "rescuers."

One of those friends, she said, was Holder.

On Sept. 11, Holder picked up Brandy Brock and another friend from her home early that morning. They stayed with Holder for several hours, her mother said, and were with him in his car when he began "having problems with another vehicle," according to a probable-cause affidavit.

As Holder and the other driver moved west on 38th Street, the other vehicle was driving aggressively and purposely braking in front of him, Holder told police.

The other driver told police that he swerved around a sewer cap. A passenger in that car told police that both drivers were racing and flipping each other off, according to the affidavit.

At the intersection of East 38th and North Arlington Avenue, the other driver stopped behind Holder's car, he told authorities. Police said Holder then stuck a handgun out of his window and fired one shot toward the other driver, per witnesses, according to the probable cause affidavit.

When the other driver saw the gun, he said he grabbed his gun from between the gear shift and his seat. He opened his door, he said, and fired one round back as Holder's car drove away. He was aware of the two passengers, the driver said, but tried to shoot at the driver, according to court documents.

Holder told police he noticed that Brandy Brock “flinched” in the front seat and realized she'd been hit.

When Melissa Brock found out about the incident that afternoon, all she knew was that her daughter had been shot in the back.

Please don't let her be paralyzed, Brock thought on the way to Eskenazi. “(Brandy and her two daughters) love fishing, swimming, camping, anything outdoors," she said. "They’re very active. I thought, ‘This will just devastate these girls if their mommy is in a wheelchair.’ ”

That she wouldn’t survive was unfathomable.

When the trauma surgeon said they’d done everything they could to save her, Brock said, it didn’t even register.

“I said, ‘What do you mean? Is she OK?' ” Brock said.

The doctor repeated himself. "I’m sorry, we did everything we can do."

“I fell to my knees on the floor,” she said. “And I started praying.”

She was then led to a room where she was asked to identify her daughter's body. “I just stood there and cried and kept kissing her on the forehead. I just kept kissing her on the forehead and kept saying, ‘You should be doing this to me. I shouldn’t be doing this to you.’ ”

Her view of Holder is complicated.

“I try to find the good in people, but it was so hard to comprehend why someone would make such a split-second poor judgement call like that,” she said, alluding to the gunshot that police allege first came from Holder. At the same time, Brock believes Holder was in a dangerous situation.

“He said that the guy was driving crazy. I’ve asked myself several times, ‘How would I respond? How would I react?’ I can’t answer that because I’ve never been in that situation. It’s hard,” she said.

But if there’s one thing Brock is certain of, it’s that Brandy Brock was blameless.

“My daughter didn’t have a gun, she didn’t shoot a gun. She didn’t have control of the vehicle. She didn’t have control of the situation, yet she was (killed).”

'Self-defense is an absolute defense'

Under Indiana’s self-defense law, a person is justified in using reasonable force to protect against what that person “reasonably” believes to be the “imminent use of unlawful force.”

“Sometimes reasonableness can mean different things to different people,” said Ryan Mears, the chief trial deputy at the Marion County prosecutor's office. “Which is why we believe it’s so important to get multiple perspectives from not only the police, but multiple prosecutors and really dive into the statements that we have.”

Mears said prosecutors conducted a “thorough evaluation” of the case. “It was unanimous that this was a case of self-defense,” he said.

That determination, Mears said, was based largely on the testimony of the passenger in the backseat of Holder’s car. The witness, who described himself as a “lifelong friend” of Brandy Brock’s, said he saw Holder take a revolver out of his pocket, according to the affidavit. He said he told Holder not to do it, but Holder pointed the gun out of the window and fired a shot toward the car behind them.

“So prior to that, there’s no evidence to suggest that deadly force was being involved. It was words being exchanged, it was aggressive driving, but there was no deadly force,” Mears said. “Holder introduced that deadly force into the situation, and so the individual who returned fire was within his rights in Indiana.”

That means the other driver’s actions leading up to the shooting, and even his actions during (firing into a car where other people were present), don’t constitute a criminal violation.

“Self-defense is an absolute defense. It’s a defense to everything," Mears said. "If someone says that we find that you acted in self-defense, that covers intentional acts, reckless acts, negligent acts. It is an absolute defense across the board."

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But being the second person to shoot doesn't automatically guarantee legal protection, and being the first person doesn't always warrant criminal charges, according to Indianapolis defense attorney Kevin Potts.

"It doesn’t necessarily matter who shot first," Potts said. "You can certainly have an individual shoot first and someone else shoot second, and the person who shot first have the valid claim of self-defense. It’s only based on their reasonable belief," he said.

Every purported act of self-defense isn't protected. According to state law, a person does not legally act in self-defense if that person is committing a crime or if they provoke someone with the intent to cause bodily injury.

A grieving mother investigates

After her daughter’s funeral, Melissa Brock says she conducted her own investigation. She says she spent hours upon hours reading court documents, police reports and talking to witnesses and prosecutors. She started a petition asking the prosecutor’s office to review the case again. She was “nonstop” for weeks.

“Any time I had a spare minute, (I was) making a phone call, meeting with somebody, talking to somebody. It almost consumed my life,” she said. “But of course, I have other responsibilities, making sure my family is OK. Every spare minute I had, I spent getting to the bottom of it.”

Brock says at least one witness told her the other driver had a gun in his handbefore Holder pulled out his. She also believes the other driver could have driven away from the incident before the fatal gunfire.

But Mears says the evidence doesn’t support that theory. And their information indicates that Holder introduced a firearm into the situation first, he said.

As for whether the other driver could have left, under Indiana law, he wouldn’t be required to.

“In Indiana, you have no duty to retreat,” Mears said. “In other words, we as prosecutors cannot consider the fact that you did not retreat.”

In the affidavit, Holder denied firing a weapon.

In a phone interview with IndyStar, Holder’s attorney, Jeffrey Mendes, said that if indeed Holder was involved in the shooting, it would have been self-defense.

“The other driver was instigating this whole situation,” Mendes said. “So (Holder) has the legal right to protect any person in his vehicle.”

Both Brock's investigation, which is detailed in her petition, and Mendes' arguments run counter to what's described in the probable-cause affidavit. Perhaps that's why, according to Potts, many self-defense-related criminal cases ultimately go to trial.

"It’s a case by case, where you end up taking the totality of the circumstances," Potts said. "Because you’re never going to be able to prove specifically what someone believed."

Potts said circumstantial evidence can indicate whether the person feared for their life. But, to some degree, coming to a conclusion of what someone was thinking based on evidence can be "subjective."

"At the end of the day on a self-defense claim, that’s the crux of the entire case—what were they thinking at the time?"

Changing the law

Brock tries to keep her daughter's memory alive for her grandchildren and for herself.

“She was loved,” Brock said. “She was just a beautiful person inside and out, a heart of gold.”

For Brock, keeping Brandy Brock alive means sharing stories and photos, "the good times and little things that she did growing up, whenever, wherever," she said.

It also means advocating for her daughter and for innocent bystanders whom Brock believes could be at risk. Brock, her family and her supporters want to see legislation that would amend the existing law, she told IndyStar. But some Indiana lawmakers have tried this — and failed.

Motivated by Trayvon Martin's death in 2012, Sen. Jean Breaux (D-34) introduced legislation in 2015 that would have added more conditions under which a person can be legally justified. The Senate bill said a person is not justified if the individual was the initial aggressor, escaped an attack and then returned to the scene or pursued an attacker or trespasser who has retreated.

“This bill says any kind of violence force should be the last resort,” Breaux told IndyStar. "That there should be an attempt to deescalate the situation. There should be an attempt to try to do whatever you can before you’re introducing that force.”

The bill ultimately didn’t get a hearing. “I knew the environment that I was in,” Breaux said, adding that the matter’s association with guns rights makes it a "contentious" issue. But she told IndyStar that she may introduce the bill again in the next session.

Brock, who's approaching 60, says she's already made several calls to lawmakers and other officials and has not received a response. It could take years for any kind of legislative effort to move forward. But Brock is patient and undeterred.

“I don’t know if it will ever get any easier. I have my moments, but my determination is going to keep me moving forward to have something good come from this tragedy. Somewhere, somehow in some point in time. I don’t know what point that will be. I just rely on God.”

Contact IndyStar reporter Crystal Hill at 317-444-6094 or cnhill@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @crysnhill.