The last moments of Raphael Christian's life were spent running from Marietta police.

The teenager was shot in the back on April 16 as police officers chased him.

Family photo (ENLARGE)

Raphael Christian was shot in the back on April 16.

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He had a black handgun in his hand.

It turned out to be a fake gun, a replica of a Beretta .22-caliber semi-automatic pistol. But Marietta police didn't know that as they chased him between apartment buildings in the Bentley Manor complex.

It was an end no one saw coming.

Brandy Phillips, 33, moved with her husband, son and daughter in 2007 to Georgia from Cincinnati.

She wanted to get away from the violence in Cincinnati, where she worked as a juvenile corrections officer.

Her mother lives in Douglas County, and they lived with her for a couple of months before moving to Cobb.

"I just fell in love with the state," she said.

But her 16-year-old son was still adjusting to Georgia. He missed his friends and some of his school credits didn't transfer over when the family moved South.

The day he died she spoke to him twice.

They talked at 11:20 a.m. "He got his report card: an A, two Bs and a C. I told him how proud I was. I told him I loved him and he loved me back," she said.

At 4:30 p.m., they talked again.

"He asked me if he could go over to his friend's Derreck's house."

She said yes. She told him to be home by 9 p.m.

The teenager went home and changed his clothes, then headed across Delk Road to Ivy Ridge, where two of his newfound friends live.

They met at Wheeler High School, where Christian was in 10th grade.

Christian and the other teens spent much of the afternoon at the Ivy Ridge apartment.

Later, sometime around 7 p.m., the teens walked up the hill to Bentley Manor. They sat outside a building, talking.

At 7:41 p.m., Cobb's 911 center received a phone call from apartment manager, Shawn Murphy.

"I have four guys hanging out on the side of building 33 and one of them appears to have a gun in his hand," he told the 911 operator. "We just had a robbery a couple of weeks ago."

Marietta police headed toward Bentley Manor. Before they arrived, the officers devised a strategy.

Officers Rutland and Thomas Modarski parked their cruisers at the complex across the street and walked to Bentley Manor, approaching it from an adjacent office park.

Officer Phillips and Michael Gravitt drove to Bentley Manor. When Phillips and Gravitt came upon the teens, several of them ran.

How many actually ran is unclear. Civilian witnesses, in statements to detectives, and police officers in written statements that were part of the criminal investigation, gave different numbers.

What is clear is that ultimately four youths were detained. Two of them were charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession later that night.

Gravitt stayed with the youths, who were prone on the ground, while Phillips chased the one teenager who continued running — Christian.

The shooting occurred seconds later.

Several witnesses told investigators they saw the uniformed officers on the property. Others heard commands: "get down" and "drop your gun."

As Christian rounded the north side of a nearby building, number 35, Phillips followed. Rutland and Modarski were approaching.

"I ran southwest to gain ground on the suspect that officer Phillips was chasing," Rutland wrote in a supplemental police report. He told an internal affairs investigator essentially the same thing.

Modarski was behind Rutland.

Rutland heard Phillips yelling at the teenager to stop. Then Rutland heard a gunshot — it was Phillips who fired the first shot.

Christian went down.

Police don't know if he simply stumbled on pine straw or dropped on purpose. Modarski told investigators that Christian never dropped the gun, even after he fell.

To Rutland, it looked like he was taking aim.

"The way the suspect was positioned, his gun was pointing in my direction," Rutland wrote. "I aimed my duty weapon at the suspect and ordered him to drop the gun. The suspect made a movement with his arm or hand (which held the gun). I perceived this movement as intent by the suspect to take aim at me, Officer Modarski or Officer Phillips."

Rutland fired one shot. It was his shot that hit the teenager and killed him.

"Shots fired, shots fired" are heard on a 911 dispatch recording.

The officers tried to stop the bleeding and started heart compressions, but to no avail.

Christian was declared dead on arrival at WellStar Kennestone Hospital.

Rutland and Phillips, were recently cleared of any wrongdoing by an internal affairs investigation. A Cobb grand jury also looked at the case and did not return an indictment against the officers.

The officers were not available for interviews.

But the teenager's mother, is not convinced that the officers acted properly and she has hired an attorney to look into the case.

How bullet entered the teen is what baffles his mother.

According to the Christian's autopsy report, Rutland's bullet entered the teen's back, just below his left shoulder muscles. It did not exit.

"How did it hit him so perfectly? If he slipped, how did it hit him so perfectly," she asked.

Lt. David Sides, head of Marietta's internal affairs unit, said the situation that night was dynamic with both Christian and Rutland moving very quickly.

After the first shot, Christian was "doing a sweeping motion [with the gun] toward the officers," Sides said.

"As he is turning, his arm is sweeping with the firearm. ...We like to think of things being in stasis. That is not the way it is. Subjects move, and they move very quickly."

This may explain why the bullet entered the way it did.

Phillips told investigators that he wasn't sure how Christian "was oriented towards officers Rutland and Modarski when he fell."

The explanation is no consolation for Brandy Phillips.

"I don't care what the reports say. Y'all shot my baby in the back," she said.

Sides said the incident was tragic both for police and Christian's family.

"We cannot ever discount how Raphael's mother feels," he said. "It is a tragedy. We can understand her pain."

For police, one question remains unanswered.

"We cannot ever know the reason why he didn't drop it," Sides said.

Brandy Phillips can't explain that either.

"He was scared," she said.

Christian bought the gun at a Douglas County flea market the weekend before the shooting.

When he showed it to her, she scolded him.

Although she was close to her son, she doesn't know why he bought it.

"I just want justice for my son. I want them fired and charged with excessive force," Brandy Phillips said.

The family moved back to Ohio after the shooting.

"I don't want my son to be made out like he's a thug," she said. "He was not a hood rat."

How we got this story:

This story was developed through interviews, and documents obtained through the Georgia Open Records Act of the Marietta Police Department's internal affairs and criminal investigations and the Cobb County Medical Examiner.