Greg Capers, the Indianola, Miss., police officer who shot 11-year-old Aderrien Murry “did not mean to shoot the child,” his lawyer said in a statement which The Delta News first reported yesterday.
The officer shot Murry in the chest at his home on May 20 while responding to a 911 call the boy had placed about a domestic disturbance after his mother’s ex-boyfriend showed up at the house in the early morning hours. The boy survived after spending five days in the hospital for a collapsed lung, fractured ribs and a lacerated liver. The officer has not been charged with a crime.
In the statement, Capers’ attorney Michael Carr said that “Sgt Capers is glad that the child is recovering and is very sorry that this happened.”
The statement is the first time the public has heard from Capers since the shooting. The Murry family’s attorney, Carlos Moore, said in May that when the responding officers arrived, the boy’s mother Nakala Murry opened the door and told them that her ex-boyfriend “was running out of the back of the house and did not have a gun.”
“Then (the officer) sticks his head in the door and says, ‘If there is anyone else in the house, come on out with your hands up.’ Being obedient, Aderrien Murry heard the command and came out with his hands up,” the Murrys’ attorney told members of the press last month. “And seconds later after leaving his room and turning a corner into the living room, he was shot in the chest by Greg Capers.”
This morning, Moore told the Mississippi Free Press that, even if the shooting was not intentional, the family believes Capers’ actions were “reckless.”
“We’ve never said that (his actions) were intentional, but we know without a shadow of a doubt that they were reckless, and because the actions were reckless, the criminal statute says he can be held accountable for aggravated assault,” Murry’s attorney said. But Carr told ABC News yesterday that though the shooting was “a pure accident,” Capers’ actions were “not reckless.”
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigations, which