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WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. — The death of a man that was ruled self-defense by police on Thursday is sparking outrage by his family.

Police said Barnard Bullins, 26, was an intruder and broke into a West Memphis home where a woman and her boyfriend were sleeping. But Bullins’ mother said that is not the case.

She said it was more of a love triangle because the woman living in the house was in a relationship with her son, on and off, for about 10 years. She has photos of the woman with her now boyfriend and of the woman with Bullins.

“We feel like … she manipulated him to come over there and they set him up to kill him,” mother Sabrina Bullins said.

Police said they spoke to the woman at about 4:30 a.m. Thursday, and she said she and her boyfriend were asleep in the bedroom when they heard the front door being kicked in. Her boyfriend heard the noise, grabbed his gun and saw Bullins in the hallway.

He then fired his gun twice, hitting Bullins in the chest and killing him.

Bullins’ mother said she got a call from the woman with a different story.

“She told me that someone shot him from outside and he fell in her door … in her apartment, and he was unconscious and wasn’t moving,” Sabrina Bullins said.

Bullins’ mother said when she got to the scene, she never saw her son and never identified her body; the woman did.

Bullins’ family said he used to live at the apartment.

“Never in a million years we thought that it would go to the extent where we feel like you set him up,” brother Octavious Bullins said.

Octavious said his family calls this a years-long love triangle, and the two men had previous altercations. Surprisingly, they said the woman and Bullins were just hanging out last month.

“Like two days before this happened he said, ‘Mom, she’s been trying to text me, trying to get in touch with me, and I’ve just been ignoring her,'” Octavious Bullins said.

The family said they just don’t know what to think now, and they think police don’t know the history of the relationship.

But what’s hardest to believe, are the actions from a woman they said was like family.

“She’s been in our family since they been in high school,” Sabrina Bullins said. “We got pictures of her, family pictures and everything. She called me mom.”

WREG tried speaking with people at the apartment Thursday, but no one wanted to speak.

Bullins’ family said the woman and the other man moved back to Mississippi. They said they just want to know the truth of what happened.

WREG asked West Memphis Police if the case will be looked at again, but we have not heard back.