The family of a man who was shot and killed in a police-involved shooting in Miami Gardens is reacting to the police chief's comments on the incident.
The attorney and the family of Lavall Hall heard what Miami Gardens Chief of Police Stephen Johnson had to say Tuesday night, but speaking on Wednesday they said it it wasn't enough.
"You understand me, it doesn't feel good, and it hurts. It hurts to see my 8-year-old baby crying for her father that they should have never took in the first place," said Melissa Edwards, the mother of Hall's daughter. "He was not a bad guy at all, he was not bad at all."
Everybody wants answers about the death of Hall, even his 8 year old daughter. It's less than a week since a Miami Gardens Police officer shot and killed Hall in his neighborhood.
"He did what he needed to do to her and now she'll never see him again. Why? That's my question also, Why?" Edwards said.
Tuesday night, Chief Johnson tried to answer why. He said Hall, a known mental patient, was combative the moment Officers Eddo Trimino and Peter Ehrlich arrived. They responded to a 911 placed by Hall's mother. She needed help getting him to a hospital.
According to Johnson, the officers used verbal commands, tried to physically take Hall into custody, even shot him with Tasers. When that didn't work, Trimino fired his gun five times, hitting Hall twice.
"Mr. Hall was 5-foot-4, 150 pounds. It was 5:00 a.m. when this happened. How much of a danger to the community could he have been running up a residential street at 5 a.m.," family attorney Glen Goldberg said.
Goldberg said Johnson might have spelled out how it happened, but he failed to lay it all out.
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"Where is the video, where's the dash cam from the police car, where's the body cam if they had it?" Goldberg said.
And now, the mother who just waned police to help wants them to be straight about what happened.
"They took my child's life and I'm begging for help and he's still not coming to me as a parent telling me anything about what happened. No no no no no no," mother Catherine Daniels said.
Johnson said the shooting remains under investigation and said all evidence would be handed over to the State Attorney's Office.
