Story highlights Officers circled the man, who was in a wheelchair, telling him to put his hands up

The chief says the man reached for the gun; his mother disputes this claim

(CNN) Police officers, their guns raised, approach the man in the wheelchair and yell out loudly and repeatedly: "Drop the gun" and "hands up."

His hands don't rise. Shots are fired. And the man keels over out of his wheelchair and onto the ground.

The police chief in Wilmington, Delaware, defended his officers Thursday. The handicapped man, Jeremy McDole, was armed with a .38-caliber gun -- the same one he'd apparently used on himself earlier, Chief Bobby Cummings said. And he never complied with the officers' requests.

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Instead, "when Mr. McDole began to remove the weapon from his waist, the officers engaged him," Cummings said. In other words, the officers opened fire because they were concerned McDole might fire his weapon at them.

But the man's mother saw it differently.

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