On July 11, 2009, 49-year-old Shem Walker, a U.S. Army veteran, was shot and killed outside his family’s Clinton Hill home in Brooklyn after confronting a man loitering on the front stoop. The man was an undercover police officer working a buy-and-bust operation in the area, a fact Walker did not know at the time.

Accounts diverge sharply. Police say Walker, who was on parole, became aggressive, attacked the officer and grabbed for the officer’s weapon, which discharged and struck Walker in the chest. Family members and some eyewitnesses say there was no struggle for a gun and that Walker was shot after telling the man to leave the property; some witnesses say they did not hear the officer identify himself before the shooting. The Brooklyn District Attorney investigated but did not file criminal charges, no grand jury was convened, and the statute of limitations for manslaughter later expired.

In 2014 the city of New York settled with Walker’s family for $2.25 million for wrongful death. Who in the neighborhood that night might add clarity to what happened in those final moments?