CRIME

Wrongful death lawsuit filed

Suit comes two years after woman, daughter killed in Moundville

Stephanie Taylor Staff Writer

A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed two years after a woman and her teen daughter were shot and killed during a domestic violence incident at their home in Moundville.

The suit claims that Brad Gray killed Paige Mitchell and her daughter, Kaci, with a gun that was confiscated after a 2015 domestic violence arrest, but later — and unlawfully — returned by police.

Investigators believe Gray, 36, shot and killed Mitchell, his 37-year-old ex-girlfriend, and 14-year-old Kaci at Mitchell's home the night of Jan. 26, 2017. He turned the gun on himself when officers arrived at his home to question him the following morning. He died at a Birmingham hospital three days later.

The suit, filed last month in Hale County Circuit Court, claims the city of Moundville and the Moundville Police Department are to blame. Attorneys said officers broke state law by returning the gun.

Gray was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence in 2015 after threatening Mitchell at his home, telling her he would “blow her away.” A Moundville police officer confiscated the handgun he was carrying at the time, according to that court file.

“Some time after Sept. 8, 2015, after Gray’s conviction, the department returned his pistol to him,” attorneys for the Mitchells' family wrote in the complaint. Returning the firearm violated a state law making it illegal for anyone convicted of domestic violence to possess a handgun, the attorneys said.

The law had been in effect eight days when Gray was convicted. It is unclear when the gun was returned.

“The department returned the pistol to Gray pursuant to a policy, custom or practice of the department of city concerning the disposition of firearms confiscated during arrests,” the attorneys wrote.

The suit, filed by Mitchell’s mother, asks for a jury trial and punitive damages. Gray's estate is also named as a defendant.

Mitchell's mother, Sylvia Ray, is represented by Tuscaloosa attorneys John McCulley and Michael Burroughs.