The father of a man who was shot and killed by federal agents in Sandy, Utah, on Tuesday says when agents gunned his son down, they were actually looking for another man. Bryan Keith Liles, 31, was killed by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents. Police said ATF agents had a warrant for Liles. Cecil “Jocko” McCants, Liles’ father, said a police detective told him the agents were searching for a different “Bryan” and encountered Liles based on bad information from a criminal informant, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. McCants says he was told his son was unarmed when he was shot.“The confidential informant gave them the wrong number, and they were pinging the wrong phone,” McCants said. “And now my son’s dead over it.”
McCants said the detective first told him that video shows Liles waving a gun, which prompted an agent to shoot five times. Three days later, McCants said, the detective told him that agents were searching for a different man named Bryan and that a criminal informant had given ATF a number that ended up belonging to Liles. Liles — who had warrants out for his arrest for probation violations — ran toward his car, McCants said, where an agent shot him. McCants said he was told his son was unarmed but that the agents thought his movements in the car could have been interpreted as searching for a gun. “And I said you’re telling me that the same officer who told me on Tuesday that you seen my son with a gun, you didn’t see nothing on a video? You didn’t see nothing,” McCants said. “It was a lie. You lied to me. So my son’s dead because of a trigger-happy cop.”