By Tim Nelson

MPR.org/90.1 FM

ST. PAUL — The mother of a man killed by St. Paul police in March defended her son and said he shouldn’t have been shot, a day after filing a federal lawsuit against the city.

Kim Handy Jones, filed a civil rights suit against the city, saying 29-year-old Cordale Handy was a victim of poor training and racial bias by police. Police shot him after responding to a domestic violence call and investigators subsequently recovered a gun at the scene.

On Thursday, Handy Jones said her son did not deserve to be killed.

“Today, because of the police wanting to play the judge, the jury and the executioner, I am without my child. No parent should be without a child,” Handy Jones said as she stood with Chicago attorney Andrew Stroth outside St. Paul city hall.

Neither Handy Jones nor her attorney offered details contradicting at least one witness statement that a woman told police Handy had a gun before he was shot.

St. Paul officials declined comment on the lawsuit. But the head of the St. Paul Police Federation said the officers were in the right when they encountered Handy on a street in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood early the morning of March 15.

“There are far too many victims of gun violence and there are far too many cops being placed in dangerous situations and being forced to make life and death decisions. This is a crisis that requires our collective resolve to address,” police union head Dave Titus said in a statement released in response to the suit.