Grieving Father Tells A Fallen Police Officer "I'm Sorry"
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WEATHERFORD (CBS11) – With one loved one dead and another locked behind bars, a Parker County family sat down exclusively with CBS 11 and tried to unravel how their clan got into a gunfight with Fort Worth police.
"I know it's not something society enjoys seeing. For that, I deeply apologize," said Ed Russell McIver III, crying as he grieved for his son, shot dead by police, and his 20-year-old grandson, now jailed in lieu of $2 million bail.
The gun battle erupted early Tuesday afternoon in far west Fort Worth, leaving Fort Worth Police Officer Matthew Pearce critically wounded. Authorities said the officer's condition remained serious, but stabilized, at JPS Hospital in Fort Worth.
Police said the shooting erupted after they attempted to pull over Ed R. McIver for felony warrants. He was accompanied by his son, Ed "Cowboy" McIver Jr.
McIver, 43, died in the shootout, while his son fled, hiding in a field for several hours, and leaving hundreds of police and residents on high-alert, before he was found and arrested without incident.
Several members of the McIver family in Weatherford were watching the manhunt play out on TV, with no concern that their family was involved – until it was reported that the suspects were a father-son team.
"My grandson was with his father because he believed in him," Ed McIver III told CBS 11.
"He's not a bad boy; he's good," he said tearfully, adding:
"But I can't justify what he's done, if he's done it. All I want is to get to the truth.
"If his bullet hit that officer, then he'll have to sing to the music."
But Ed and Linda McIver believe their grandson was, instead, caught unwillingly in the crossfire, and that his father told him to run for his life.
"I don't want to see (an attempted) capital murder charge brought up on him if he didn't shoot the man," Ed McIver III said.
"He was running scared, like anyone would in a firefight. You can't blame him for that," he said.
The McIver family offered their condolences to Officer Pearce and his family.
"I am honestly, deeply regretful. I am sorry," Ed McIver III said, adding that he would like to tell that to the fallen officer in person.
McIver was "cold" and "angry" when he was released from prison nine years ago, after serving five years on a gun-related criminal conviction, his family said.
They said he vowed to fight to the death, if police ever tried to lock him up again.
"Something that happened in prison," Linda McIver said. "He made it very clear to all of us when he came home, that if something in his life ever changed, and they wanted to send him back to prison…he would die first," she said.
Marcy McIver, fighting back tears, agreed that prison made her husband "cold …it made him angry all the time."
"He just didn't want to live that way again," she said.
"Cowboy" was just a young boy when his father went to prison, his mother said.
They would visit every weekend, she said, with her son always asking when he was coming home.
But "Cowboy" never blamed police, his mother said, adding:
"He knows that they're doing their job."
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If you want to reach CBS 11′s Senior Investigative Producer Jack Douglas Jr., you can email him at jdouglas@cbs.com.