A 32-year-old man shot dead by an off-duty Los Angeles police officer inside a Corona Costco was mentally disabled and described Sunday by a cousin a “gentle giant,” while the man’s parents were the two people critically wounded by the same officer, the cousin said.

Kenneth French, 32, died Friday night at the discount store. Corona police said Saturday their investigation showed French had assaulted the officer in an unprovoked confrontation.

Update: Attorney says officer was knocked out, came to and fired gun to protect himself, son

The cousin, Rick Shureih, said the family is shocked, and looking for answers.

The off-duty police officer has not been publicly named and could not be reached for comment on Sunday. He was not in custody.

The officer works in LAPD’S Southwest Division, the department said. It is conducting an administrative investigation of the incident, according to Corona police. The Corona Police Department also said its investigators are working with the Riverside County District Attorney’s office in evaluating the shooting.

French’s parents, Russell French and Paola French, remained in an intensive care unit Sunday, said Shureih, who said his aunt and uncle accompanied Kenneth French “Everywhere. Everywhere he goes. Every family trip.

“He just goes with the flow, he’s a gentle giant,” Shureih said of his cousin during an interview in his Riverside County-area home, located east of Corona, on Sunday. Shureih lives a few miles from his aunt and uncle’s house, where Kenneth also lived.

Kenneth French was “non-violent, non-aggressive, non-verbal,” and “he has to be pretty much monitored,” Shureih said, still speaking of his cousin in the present tense during the interview. “He’s not the kind to trade words, so I don’t believe that a verbal confrontation happened.”

No one answered the door at the French’s home Sunday, where an American flag flew on a pole out front. Next-door neighbor Marlon Calimlim said he only learned of Kenneth’s disability when he heard it on news reports after the shooting.

“They are a very nice couple…I can’t believe that a policeman would fire seven to eight shots,” he said, referring to the number of shots that Costco shoppers told reporters they heard in the store.

Calimlim said Kenneth French had left the family home in a run on Thursday, with the mother and father following, but when father and son came back, Russell had his arm around Kenneth’s shoulder and said, “We just took a little jog.”

The neighbor said he could not recall Kenneth French ever challenging anyone or being aggressive. “They have been here four or five years. There was never an incident like that,” Calimlim said.

The Corona police account said the incident started Friday evening when, “Without provocation, a male unknown to the officer’s family assaulted the officer while the officer was holding his young child,” a statement said. “This attack resulted in the officer firing his weapon, striking the male and two of the male’s family members.”

The officer’s child was not injured. The officer was treated at a local hospital for unspecified reasons and then released.

Shureih said the family is looking for an attorney. “We need to know the guy’s name,” he said of the off-duty officer. “We need to see surveillance video. We are looking for witnesses, we are looking for any help we can get.”

Shureih declined to give specifics about Kenneth French’s mental condition, but said he has been struggling for years. “The issues started in his adulthood,” he said.

His cousin was “around 6 feet, but he’s not an intimidating guy,” Shureih said. “He’s a bigger guy; someone might be intimidated by his size.”

He published a photo of Kenneth, Russell and Paola on social media. “This is a family that was unarmed and was just grocery shopping,” he said in his Facebook post.

“That’s not the monster that they were portraying him as,” he said, alluding to his cousin’s photo.

“I’m not anti-police” he said. “We’re a pro-police family.”

Jim Bueerman, president of the National Police Foundation, a research organization, said Corona investigators were probably trying to track down security camera footage of the incident, as well as dozens of potential witnesses, some who themselves might have taken cell phone video of the shooting.

The number of shots fired was not necessarily unusual. When police use deadly force, officers are trained to continue firing until the threat is ended, said Bueerman, also a former Redlands police chief.

But police also are trained to de-escalate situations. Current LAPD training emphasizes putting space between the officers and an aggressive subject, and taking the time necessary to try to calm them down.

In an off-duty scenario, that might mean simply walking away, Bueerman said, though that’s not always an option.

The Riverside District Attorney’s Office would have several questions, he said, including whether the off-duty officer was acting in his capacity as a police officer when he fired his weapon.

“The issue here is whether the officer was taking a reasonable action, or if his actions were unreasonable,” Bueerman said.