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The family of Fred Cox, an 18-year-old Black man fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy at a funeral in North Carolina last November, filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging he was trying to protect a mother and her son from a drive-by shooting at the time.
“Fred is dead for being a hero while Black,” Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney representing Cox’s family, said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The federal lawsuit filed against the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office and Deputy Michael Shane Hill seeks damages on six counts, including the use of excessive force, wrongful death, battery, and negligence, and the violation of Cox’s Fourth and 14th Amendments.
The complaint said that Hill used “unreasonable and deadly force” on Cox while he was “saving the lives of a mother and her young son.”
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