SACRAMENTO, Calif — A couple from Cleveland, Ohio is calling for answers in Sacramento after their 35-year-old son was shot and killed at a South Sacramento apartment complex on Dec. 8.
Kimbert and Kim Fleshman are struggling to accept the loss of their son, Christopher Saunders, and that the man who the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office said shot him was released under the presumption of "justifiable homicide."
The deadly shooting occurred at 12:30 a.m. at an apartment complex on the 6600 block of Sunnyslope Dr.
Sheriff's deputies arrived to find Christopher Saunders with a gunshot wound to the chest.
"I guess by the time the fire department got there, he passed on," said Kimbert Fleshman.
Saunders' parents rushed to Sacramento from Cleveland when a relative sent them a news article about his death more than a week after it happened.
"Nobody informed me at all, that my son had been shot and killed or anything," Kim Fleshman said.
The sheriff's office said on the night he died, Saunders banged on his estranged wife's door, rushed inside, grabbed her and commanded that she leave with him.
When she refused, the sheriff's office said, Saunders got into a fight with several others who were living there -- including a man who had a legal firearm and shot Saunders in the chest.
Saunders' mother remembers her last conversation with her son, when he told her that his family was fine.
"We're just trying to work things out, that's what he said," Kim Fleshman said.
The Sacramento County District Attorney's Office is reviewing the case, but made a preliminary decision to release the man who shot Saunders on a presumption of "justifiable homicide."
"All we want is justice. Somebody has to pay for this," Kimbert Fleshman said.
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