OAKLAND — The family of an Oakland woman shot and killed by Emeryville police in February filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Emeryville on Thursday, saying they don’t believe the police department’s narrative of her death.

“Immediately following the murder, we went out and did a people’s investigation and found wildly different accounts of what happened to her,” said Cat Brooks of the Anti Police-Terror Project. Brooks was one of more than a dozen activists, many carrying posters that read “Black Lives Matter” and “Justice for Yuvette” who joined Yuvette Henderson’s family and their attorney, Dan Siegel, outside an Oakland federal courthouse on Thursday.

“What we do know is that in a matter of seconds of the police arriving on to the scene with Yuvette, she was dead,” Brooks said.

Emeryville police reported that officers Michelle Shepherd and Warren Williams fatally shot the 38-year-old Henderson after she pointed a gun at them and refused to drop the weapon. Of seven shots fired, she was hit three times in the back and head during the afternoon shooting on Feb. 3, 2015, near Extra Space Storage in the 3400 block of Hollis Street in Oakland by the Emeryville border.

Police also said that Henderson attempted to carjack three different people with her gun before the shooting after she was caught shoplifting knives at the Home Depot at 3838 Hollis Street in Emeryville. Police said she first pointed the gun at the security officers at Home Depot.

Siegel said the cities of Emeryville and Oakland are not cooperating with their demands for the police reports, and it took eight months for them to obtain the coroner’s report. The lawsuit he filed Thursday on behalf of Henderson’s two minor children alleges that Henderson did not have a gun raised at the officers and they were in no danger when they fired at her.

The Emeryville Police Department on Thursday said the shooting, while tragic for everyone involved, was justified.

“The officers yelled several times to Ms. Henderson to drop the gun, but she refused to do so and continued to point it at the officers while walking towards the occupied cars,” police Chief Heather Tejada said in a prepared statement. “The officers fired their weapons to protect the civilians and themselves from the lethal force that Ms. Henderson presented.

“The officers had to make a split-second decision and they did so in accordance with the training they have received by our department which is also in accordance with the state of California Commission on Police Officers Standards and Training,” Tejada wrote.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages from the officers and the city of Emeryville.

Siegel said its one of many lawsuits ” being filed across the country to take on police departments for their wrongful killings, executions and brutality toward African-American people in this country.”

Henderson’s siblings were teary as they spoke of the sister they said they loved dearly.

“It hurts. It’s very painful. It never ends and it is a never-ending story,” her older sister Antrinette Jenkins said.

Contact Malaika Fraley at 925-234-1684. Follow her at Twitter.com/malaikafraley.