An armed 21-year-old man killed by an officer at a mall in Alabama on Thanksgiving night "likely did not fire" the shots that wounded two people and sent terrified shoppers running for cover, CNN reports citing police.
The shooting at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, about 10 miles south of Birmingham, happened Thursday, one of the year's busiest shopping days.
Authorities mistakenly thought Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., known as E.J., had fired the rounds that left an 18-year-old and a 12-year-old hospitalized, Hoover police spokesman Capt. Gregg Rector said in a statement.
Police initially said Bradford opened fire after an altercation with the 18-year-old and an officer fatally shot him as he fled the scene. But late Friday, police changed that story, saying that while Bradford was involved in "some aspect of the altercation" and was armed with a handgun, he likely did not fire the rounds that injured the two others.
"We regret that our initial media release was not totally accurate, but new evidence indicates that it was not," Rector said.