Alabama attorney general clears Hoover police officer in Riverchase Galleria shooting (video)

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office today said it has cleared the Hoover police officer who shot and killed a 21-year-old Hueytown man in the Riverchase Galleria on Thanksgiving night of any wrongdoing and will not press charges against him.

The attorney general determined that the officer, identified only as Officer 1, did not commit a crime when he shot and killed Emantic “E.J.” Bradford Jr. following another shooting in the mall just five seconds before.

A 24-page report issued by the attorney general’s office said police officers saw Bradford running with a gun toward unarmed people and believed Bradford was about to murder two people and posed a threat to others in the area.

“Officer 1 was faced with such a ‘tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving’ situation when he saw E.J. Bradford running with a gun towards unarmed persons, and his response to that split-second situation was reasonable and based on an appropriate level of care for innocent lives,” the report said.

Officer 1 also acted consistently with nationally-accepted standards for responding to active shooter scenarios, the report said. “Law enforcement officials are now trained to ‘rush straight to the gunfire’ and ‘end the threat,’ the report said. “Under the ALERRT (Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training) system, an officer’s primary responsibility is to neutralize threats to stop the killing.”

The attorney general’s report gives a detailed breakdown of the three shootings that took place in the busy mall that night, based on the State Bureau of Investigation’s interviews with 48 people, surveillance videos, body camera videos, crime scene photographs, and firearms and biological analysis reports from the Alabama Department of Forensice Sciences.

The report indicates that 20-year-old Erron Brown of Bessemer shot 18-year-old Brian Wilson outside the Foot Action store on the northern end of the mall and ran toward J.C. Penney.

Video evidence indicates Bradford initially ran in the opposite direction, away from J.C. Penney, creating a gap between himself and the initial gunshots.

“As he creates this gap, Bradford draws his weapon and chambers a round,” the report said. “Bradford then charges back toward J.C. Peney, gun drawn. Officer 1 shoots Bradford as Bradford is running toward Brian Wilson (the gunshot victim), AC (who is assisting Wilson), Erron Brown (the initial shooter), and several innocent bystanders.”

Two police officers who were about 75 feet away heard the gunshots and turned to see Bradford running, gun in hand, toward the injured man and others, the report said.

The officers can be seen in videos three seconds after the first shooting. “The officers engage Bradford, who stands holding a gun and then, unlike others at the scene, runs toward the gunshots,” the report said. “Within the next 1-2 seconds, … Officer 1 shoots Bradford, who falls to the ground and slides forward, having been killed by a catastrophic wound to the head.”

The Jefferson County Coroner Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Bradford was shot three times: once in the back right side of his head; once in the middle of the back of his neck; and once just above the right buttock. The medical examiner determined that Bradford died from an injury to his brain caused by the bullet that struck him in the back of his head.

A fourth bullet fired by Officer 1, or at least a large fragement of that bullet, did not strike Bradford but instead struck a pillar just to the right of the entrance of Foot Action, the report said. Those were the only four bullets fired by Hoover police, the report said.

This indicates that Officer 1 did not fire the bullet that hit a 12-year-old girl in her back, the report said. Surveillance video from FootAction shows that the girl already had entered FootAction before Officer 1 fired any shots, and the girl already was holding her back before the officer fired any shots, the report said.

There was no evidence that Bradford’s Glock 19 9 mm gun was fired at the scene, the report said. It was recovered with 14 live rounds in the 15-round magazine and one live round still in the chamber.

Officer 1 told investigators he did not give any verbal commands to Bradford before firing his weapon due to the quickness of the event and the immediate threat Bradford appeared to pose to Wilson and the man with Wilson.

However, two witnesses told investigators they heard the officer tell Bradford to drop his weapon three times before shooting him.

Officer 1 said his body camera was on standby mode when the shootings occurred and he did not have time to turn it on due to the imminent nature of the threat. Accordinly, his body camera video and those of his fellow officers, did not begin until after Bradford was shot, the report said.

The attorney general office’s said that Alabama Rules for Professional Conduct state that prosecutors should not seek criminal charges in cases where the prosecutor knows the conduct in question is not a crime or where he does not possess sufficient evidence to prove a crime at trial.

And the Legislature has expressly said that if evidence shows a police officer acted reasonably within the line of duty, no criminal charges are warranted, even if that action caused death.

The attorney general’s report indicates the attorney general’s office met with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama about the case. “It is the attorney general’s understanding that the FBI has found no evidence to initiate a case for civil rights violation(s),” the report said.

However, the attorney general’s report also notes that Bradford’s family members are able to file a civil lawsuit if they so choose.

Meanwhile, the attorney general’s office is continuing to prosecute Brown for attempted murder in relation to his shooting of Wilson. Brown has claimed he acted in self-defense when shooting Wilson.

See the complete report from the attorney's general office regarding the police shooting.

See more stories regarding the Thanksgiving night Riverchase Galleria shootings.