Tenisha Felio knew that her husband, James, was going through something, although she just didn't know what it was. In six years of marriage, he'd never laid a hand on her, until earlier that week.
"He wasn't himself," Tenisha said. "It scared me, because I'd never seen him that way ever, so I didn't know what to do."
One night, it got so bad that she deliberately waited for hours for him to fall asleep, and then called 911.
"He's been beating me, kicking me, punching me in the head," Tenisha told the operator during the call.
Lawrenceville police officers Christopher Hyatt and Karl Hydrick responded to the Felio home.
"I told the cops when they got there, I'I just need to get him out of the house while he's calm,'" Tenisha said.
The officers went upstairs and found James asleep, naked, and unarmed.
Within 10 minutes, he was dead.
"I just needed to get him to the hospital. I just needed to get him help," Tenisha said. "I don't get it, I don't know why. I still want to know why."
Tenisha carry her three young sons downstairs.
When she saw her husband resisting the officers' efforts to handcuff him, she heard the repeated clicks of a Taser.
"I guess he hit it just right," Hydrick said when he was interviewed about the shooting. "The (Taser) cartridge came off, I guess."
When Hydrick's Taser proved to be ineffective, he started struggling with James on the floor. He said that's when James grabbed the officer's gun belt, and holster.
"I thought if he got it he was going to shoot my a**," Hydrick said.
Hydrick said he rolled over onto his right side, covering his gun, but he said James didn't let go until Hyatt shot him.
Tenisha watched the whole thing, "Life can change in a second," she said. "You lose your whole world, and it's taken."
Later that morning, a detective from the Gwinnett County Police Department's Deadly Force Investigation Team interviewed Tenisha, who told a very different story about how her husband died.
"He was by himself on the ground, hands back," she said, adding that Hyatt yelled to Hydrick to move out of the way before he fired, and Hydrick did.
"I know the older cop is in the corner because I could see him through the crack of the door," Tenisha said.
In a deposition after being cleared of any wrongdoing, Hyatt was pressed about Hydrick's position, acknowledging that he had yelled to him.
"He was in the process of trying to stand up. He had not fully stood up," Hyatt said.
In his deposition, Hydrick said: "I believe I was still on my right side when he got shot, yes sir."
A Gwinnett police detective interviewed each officer about the shooting for about 10 minutes.
The district attorney's office cleared the officers based on that review, without any follow-up.
Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter did not handle the case himself, and said he would review the file and then answer questions.
The Lawrenceville officers and their chief did not want to comment, because the civil case is on appeal.
The only person to question their story was the Felio family attorney in depositions.
"You had given Sgt. Hydrick a warning that I'm going to shoot this guy?” the attorney asked Hyatt.
"Correct," Hyatt said.
"And Sgt. Hydrick was able to not get shot, so did that mean he actually moved away from mrMr. Felio, if you know?" the attorney asked.
"I don't recall," Hyatt said.
"So you don't know if Sgt. Hydrick had moved away from Felio? You just shot? Meaning if that's the case, wouldn't you have potentially shot Sgt. Hydrick?" the attorney asked.
Records show that the bullet traveled front to back and slightly upward in James Felio's body, which means that was likely lying on the floor.
"The physical evidence as far as I'm concerned at least makes you question as to what happened," attorney James Dearing said.
Tenisha has regrets, along with many questions for the officers.
"You took away somebody's husband, somebody's daddy," she said. "Our whole world died."
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