When Nakala Murry gave her son Aderrien a phone at around 4 a.m. last Saturday morning, urging him to call her mother and to call the police, she never imagined that moments later he would be on the ground, bleeding from a bullet wound in his chest.
Murry spoke in front Indianola’s city hall annex building on Monday, two days after her son was shot by an Indianola police officer responding to Aderrien’s call for help during a domestic disturbance.
“His words to me were, ‘Why did he shoot me? What did I do?’” Murry said during a tearful moment.
Aderrien was eventually taken to the emergency room here in Indianola and was later flown to a Jackson hospital.
He suffered a collapsed lung and broken ribs, according to Murry. He is expected to make a full recovery, but as of Monday, he still required the aid of oxygen as he recovers at a Jackson hospital.
Indianola City Attorney Kimberly Merchant confirmed to The Enterprise-Tocsin that the officer who fired the shot is Greg Capers.
She said she could not comment further, because it is a personnel matter, but she did confirm that Capers is currently not on active duty.
“He is not on duty,” Merchant said. “The reason why we cannot comment, and I know that it’s frustrating for folks, but it is a personnel matter.”
Murry was surrounded on Monday by family, friends and her attorney, Carlos Moore, with the Cochran Firm. Inside the annex building, the Indianola Board of Aldermen met during a regular session.
The large crowd later sat in on the meeting.
Sometime around 4 a.m. last Saturday, the father of Murry’s other child came to her home. He is not Aderrien’s father, she said.
“I noticed he was irate,” Murry said. ‘When he’s irate, I know what can happen after him being irate. That’s when I snuck my little boy his phone.”
Murry’s daughter and 3-year-old nephew were also in the house at the time, she said.
She asked Aderrien to call her mother, then the police.
“I had my son call the police,” she said. “My son was in his room. No one knew he was up but me. So, I gave him the phone, and I asked him to call my mom…I told him to call my mom and call the police. So, he was doing what he was told.”
Moments later, officers arrived at the home on B.B. King Road.
“I heard the cops at the door,” Murry said. “They were knocking at the door. I started going to the door. They started kicking the door, to tear it down.”
Murry said officers never entered the home. They remained in the frame of the front door, she said.
They did give an order for everyone in the house to come out with their hands up, she said.
“When I opened the door, and I put my hands up, they asked me did he have a gun. I said no, he did not have a gun,” Murry said referring to the “irate” man inside the home.
When Murry exited the home, it appears Aderrien tried to leave with her. He ran out of his room, his mother said, into the living room, going for the front door when he was shot.
“He came from around the corner, and it was instant,” she said. “It was instant. [Capers] wouldn’t know if it was a man, boy, pig or cow. He wouldn’t know, because he shot so fast.”
Murry said she immediately began to render aid to her son.
She could hear an officer call for paramedics, but she knew she couldn’t let him bleed.
“I can’t describe it,” she said. “He ran to me. He was bleeding. I held him. I held his wound. He bled out the mouth. Every time I close my eyes, I see it… I held his wound. I made sure blood didn’t come out.”
Murry said Capers joined her to administer first aid.
“I wasn’t going to move,” she said. “He told me to move, but I wasn’t going to move. Blood was just coming out.”
Capers has been no stranger to controversy in the past few months.
In late December, Capers responded to another domestic disturbance where he tased suspect Kelvin Franklin.
Franklin at the time accused Capers and others of police brutality, including tasing him in the neck, placing him in a choke hold and beating him.
Body camera footage would later show that he was tased, but not in the neck. No one appeared to placed him in a choke hold or beat him.
Franklin eventually pled guilty to a number of charges, and no disciplinary action was pursued against Capers.
IPD Chief Ronald Sampson told The E-T that the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was called in immediately after Saturday’s shooting.
MBI typically handles officer-involved shootings and said in a release last weekend, “MBI is currently assessing this critical incident and gathering evidence. Upon completing the investigation, agents will share their findings with the Attorney General’s Office.”
For Murry and her attorney, those findings likely will not come in a satisfactory time frame.
Moore issued an ultimatum on Monday demanding Capers and Sampson be fired and that all body camera footage from the scene be released in the next 48 hours.
Moore said on Monday that he has not personally seen any video footage of the shooting, nor has he spoken to anyone from the city, but that did not stop him from calling for a criminal investigation.
“This man not only deserves to be terminated, but he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
If Moore’s demands were not met, they promised to occupy city hall on Thursday morning.
If the sit-in happened, it occurred after press time.
Murry said she has not heard much out of the city, other than what Indianola Mayor Ken Featherstone said during a Sunday night Facebook live that covered several issues, including this shooting.
During the Facebook event, Featherstone said the city is yielding to MBI and that there is no concerted effort to cover up anything that occurred on Saturday.
Chief Sampson did speak to us twice on Saturday and again on Monday, giving only the details he could as MBI took control of the case.
“It’s extremely tragic, on both sides,” Sampson said.
