Someone alerted Richardson to the situation, and she arrived at her son’s property as deputies continued their search.

She said deputies were able to find her son in the woods and cuffed him using two pairs of handcuffs, presumably because Howard is a large man. Richardson said she is not sure whether the handcuffs were fastened behind Howard’s back or in front of him, but that she noticed her son rocking back and forth in the back seat of the vehicle. She thinks he may have been trying to move his handcuffed wrists to the front of his body.

Howard somehow retrieved his cellphone and called a friend from inside the SUV, his mom said. Richardson was standing next to the friend during that phone call and said her son told him: “Tell my family I love them, and I’m sorry.”

Then she heard a gunshot.

Her son, bleeding profusely, was able to walk to an ambulance with deputies on either side of him, Richardson said. She said deputies initially told her that the bullet grazed her son’s head, but the amount of blood inside the SUV indicated otherwise.