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A South Carolina homeowner who was fired at by the police after being mistaken for a suspect had just two seconds to react before he was shot, MSNBC reports.

Bryant Heyward, 26, was shot in the neck by Charleston County Sherriff’s deputy Keith Tyner last week after calling about a break-in. Heyward says two men shot into his home on May 7 in Hollywood, South Carolina. After hearing the intruders’ shots, Heyward grabbed his brother’s .40-caliber gun and returned fire.

Tyner and another officer arrived later after the suspects had already fled. When Hayward went to meet the officers in the back of his home, he was shot before Tyner could finish saying, “Show me your hands!” According to MSNBC:

In seconds, Heyward was shot in the neck. In the police incident report written after the shooting, Deputy Richard Powell, the second officer on the scene, wrote that he and Tyner immediately saw bullet holes in the front windows of the house. He said the two of them walked around to the back of the house and noticed that the back door was also damaged, according to the report.

“As we were approaching, the back door swung open,” Powell wrote. “But (I) could not see in due to my angle.” Powell said Tyner then shouted commands and that Tyner had spotted a gun in Heyward’s hand. Then he heard gunfire. Powell, Tyner said, shot Heyward to “suppress the threat.”

After Heyward was shot, he reportedly told the officers, “Wrong guy, sir… this is my house.”

The dash camera footage above doesn’t show the incident, as the police cruiser was obstructed by a tall wooden fence.

Heyward’s family stated he’s currently paralyzed from the waist down. Community members defended him for using a gun against the home intruders and slammed the police for assuming the worst of the homeowner.

The shooting happened just 30 minutes away from where Walter Scott was killed by a North Charleston police officer in April.

SOURCE: MSNBC | VIDEO CREDIT: YouTube 

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Homeowner Had Just Two Seconds To React Before Police Mistook Him For Intruder, Opened Fire  was originally published on newsone.com