MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The father of the man shot and killed by U.S. Marshals spoke for the first time Friday about his son’s death, while facing some scrutiny from Mississippi officials.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says marshals shot Brandon Webber on Wednesday night after he rammed a vehicle multiple times into officers’ cars and got out of the vehicle with a gun.
Sonny Webber says he wants to set the record straight about what happened to his son outside his grandmother’s house on Durham. He showed a reporter around the yard.
“My son was laying right here. This is his body and this is his head print,” he said. “His car was sitting right there, backed in. How did he ram someone backed in the driveway?”
DeSoto County authorities say at the time marshals were trying to arrest him for a shooting and robbery last week in Hernando, Mississippi, he was driving the victim’s stolen car.
“I don’t know anything about the car,” Sonny Webber said. “There go a car, it ain’t stolen. He got an Audi, it ain’t stolen. He got a Kia, that ain’t stolen. He’s got three cars. … They rammed my son. This is my son’s car. Drove up on that (*****) like a Tonka toy.”
The shooting led to violence in the Frayser neighborhood, with crowds throwing rocks and bricks, injuring officers and damaging property.
The Mississippi Department of Public Safety has since issued a warning about threats made against all law enforcement officers by members of the Gangster Disciples, and say Brandon Webber’s father also made threats against officers the night of the shooting.
But Sonny Webber said he doesn’t know anything about those threats to retaliate against law enforcement.
“I don’t know nothing about that, call for retaliation,” he said.
Relatives who were in the streets Wednesday night say right now, they just want peace. They say they don’t know if Brandon had a weapon but think marshals could have handled the situation differently.
“All I can do is tell people to stop the violence and the killing. I just lost a nephew,” said Brandon Webber’s uncle, who did not want to be named. “Maybe I could have seen my nephew in jail, maybe.”