5-2-2017-ERNIE ALLEN’S-TOP STORY-
The grieving teenage boys gathered Monday at 8 a.m., an hour before class began on what should have been their first day of spring football practice at a school in a state where the gridiron brings people together.
But instead of putting on pads and working out, they wept, they seethed and they prayed.
And then the members of the Mesquite High School football teams walked across their athletic field house, toward the family of their dead friend, and offered all they could — hugs, one by one.
“It was a hard, hard morning,” football coach Jeff Fleener told The Washington Post, “and one of those things they don’t ever prepare you for as a coach.”
It had been 33 hours since Jordan Edwards, a 15-year-old freshman team player and model student, was fatally shot in the head while leaving a party in the Dallas suburb of Balch Springs. The bullets came from the gun of a police officer, authorities said, but it remains unclear what provoked the shooting.
Initially, Balch Springs Police Chief Jonathan Haber said one of his officers opened fire after an “unknown altercation” with a vehicle that backed toward police in an “aggressive manner.” By Monday afternoon, Haber had retracted that narrative. Body camera footage, he said, revealed the vehicle had actually backed up and then started to drive away when the officer started shooting.
“After reviewing the video,” Haber said, “I don’t believe that [the shooting] met our core values.”
From the beginning, the family’s attorney, Lee Merritt, has maintained that the shooting was unprovoked and unjust. Jordan, he said, was at a party with friends Saturday night when they heard that police were on the way.
As they went outside to the car, Jordan and the four other teen boys with him saw flashlights and heard gunshots, Merritt said. They backed out of their parking spot and apparently heard someone yell profanities. Then more gunshots ripped into the car.
The boys fled a block before realizing Jordan, whose forehead was smoking, had been shot through the front passenger window, Merritt said. The driver of the car, Jordan’s 16-year-old brother, stopped and flagged down an approaching police cruiser for help.
Jordan was pronounced dead at the hospital. He was killed by a rifle wound to the head, the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s office said Monday.
Katie Mettler
The Washington Post 
