An Alabama police officer will not face charges for killing a man he mistook for the gunman in a mall shooting, the state attorney general announced on Tuesday.

The announcement drew outrage from the dead man’s family, who said the officer jumped to conclusions when he saw a young black man with a gun. The officer shot 21-year-old Emantic “EJ” Bradford Jr while responding to an earlier shooting on Thanksgiving night at a mall in Hoover, Alabama.

The Alabama attorney general, Steve Marshall, said his investigation concluded “the officer did not commit a crime” and that he would not present the case to a grand jury. Marshall said he considered the matter closed.

The officer-involved shooting sparked weeks of protests. The decision by Marshall reignited calls for demonstrations.

A 26-page report released by Marshall’s office said the officer mistakenly believed Bradford fired the earlier shots. But the report also said the Hoover officer, whose name has not been released, was justified in shooting him because of the threat he posed.

The report said the officer saw Bradford running toward the scene with a gun and believed he was trying to kill the wounded shooting victim or harm others. The victim was actually Bradford’s friend, with whom he had been at the mall.

“A reasonable person could have assumed that the only person with a gun who was running toward the victim of a shooting that occurred just three seconds earlier fired the shots,” the report found.

The report also stated that Bradford, who had a gun drawn, “posed an immediate deadly threat to persons in the area”.

Marshall released two 10-second clips from surveillance cameras. The video shows an officer shooting Bradford from behind as Bradford is running. An autopsy found that Bradford was shot three times: once in back of the head, once in his neck and once in his lower back, according to the report.

The report said the officer told investigators he did not turn on his body camera from standby mode because there was “no time”.

The report also said it was “unclear” if verbal commands were issued for Bradford to stop running. The officer told investigators he did not issue verbal commands, although two witnesses said they heard them, the report stated.

Bradford’s family reacted with anger.

“The attorney general, he’s in bed with Hoover. Bottom line. He covered it up. He sanitized it just so the officer could get off with murdering my son,” Emantic Bradford Sr told reporters.

Ben Crump, an attorney representing the family, said his clients “will have their day in court”.

“The police shot, we believe, because they feared a black man with a gun,” Crump said.

Crump said the video shows Bradford “did nothing wrong” and that the young man drew his gun to protect his friends.

“He was really the hero in all of this,” Bradford’s mother, April Pipkins, told reporters.

Dillon Nettles, a policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, said in a statement Marshall’s “characterization of EJ Bradford as a ‘threat’ that needed ‘eliminating’ reveals how little regard [he] has for the life of this black man.

“Regardless of what the attorney general of Alabama said in his report, EJ Bradford’s life mattered. Black lives matter. We won’t stay quiet while law enforcement continues to inflict lethal violence against black people and attempt to justify it.”



Nettles added that the ACLU was “reviewing the report and will determine appropriate next steps”.



