Police disavowed an earlier explanation for why officers shot at a car driven by Chris Few, killing his six-year-old son, Jeremy Madis, in Marksville

State investigators conceded on Thursday that local police officers had fired the shots that killed a small boy in Marksville, Louisiana, and disavowed an earlier explanation for why the officers deployed their guns.

The boy, Jeremy Mardis, died on Tuesday night after police shot into a car driven by his father, Chris Few. On Thursday, Colonel Michael Edmonson, head of the Louisiana state police, denied earlier reports that Few had been reversing his car toward the officers, who then had to defend themselves. “No. I didn’t say that,” he told the Guardian. “That didn’t come from me.”

At a press conference, Edmonson initially described the shooting as “an exchange of gunfire”, but later clarified that only the officers had shot, and that investigators had found no gun in Few’s car. Officials had previously declined to confirm whether officer gunfire was responsible for Mardis’s death.

Edmonson also said video footage of the incident does exist, but that investigators have not reviewed it. He added that the officers involved – there are four – had so far refused to speak with state police investigators. Police have not released the names of the involved officers.

Asked by the Guardian what reason they offered for their silence, Edmonson said: “You’d have to ask them. We are trying to talk with them.”

At least one of the shooters was a Marksville police officer who was moonlighting for the city marshal’s office, an agency responsible for serving court papers . But according to Marksville’s mayor, John Lemoine, city marshal Floyd Voinche and his officers have recently begun overstepping their authority.

“I don’t know why he felt the need to start patrolling in city limits,” Lemoine said Thursday of Voinche. “It makes no sense to me.”

The Guardian could not reach Voinche for comment before press time.

Edmonson, the state police head, said his investigators started gathering evidence the night of the shooting, attempting to reconstruct what happened without the cooperation of the officers involved.

Orange spray paint marks the orientation of Few’s car and three patrol cars, at the intersection of Taensas Street and Martin Luther King Drive. The particular placement of the cars – and a spray of glass from the passenger’s side of Few’s car – seems to indicate Few was not backing toward the officers. His car was perpendicular to them, and the officers’ shots hit the driver’s side broadside.

Avoyolles Parish coroner LJ Mayeux said Mardis was killed by multiple gunshot wounds to the head and torso. He died at the scene. His father, Few, is in serious condition at Rapides Hospital in Alexandria, Louisiana.

Few’s fiancee, Megan Dixon, said the entire tragedy started with a romantic dispute. Earlier on Tuesday night, she said, she and Few had bickered at TJ’s pool hall, and she had left with a friend named Sally. Few also left, and picked up his son at a relative’s house.

A short while later, Few pulled up next to Dixon at a stop light – Marksville is a small town – and tried to get her to come home with him. “I wouldn’t do it,” she said. “I’m stubborn.”

Moments later, she said, as the cars pulled away from the light, she saw two marshals’ cars – marked in black and white – approaching from behind with their lights flashing. She looked into Few’s car as he pulled away, and he was pointing at his son’s head, indicating that he was in the car and he wasn’t sure what to do.

Few was afraid of the marshals, she said, because he and and one of the marshals on the scene had a prior personal conflict.