A man who shot and killed a murderer in a shopping mall parking lot says he is neither a hero nor a "Deathwish" vigilante.
Todd Broom, 25, a Xerox repairman, held a news conference Thursday to discuss the Monday shootings and why he came forward to admit to killing Eddie Edwards. Police in the suburb of Irving, where the shootings occurred, said Broom's actions were not premeditated and released him Wednesday without charges or bail. The case will be investigated by the grand jury.Broom told reporters he had pulled into a parking space at Irving Mall to buy a pair of work shoes when he saw Edwards chase his former girlfriend, Demetria Taylor, 28, through the parking lot and then shot her several times in the head with a .38-caliber revolver.
Then, in a quiet voice, Broom repeated what he had told Irving police when he surrendered Wednesday: that he tried to stop Edwards, firing one shot from his Ruger .44-caliber Magnum pistol into the man's car trunk, then a second into his driver's side door.
The second shot killed Edwards and, by Thursday morning, made Broom famous.
"I think the public will be sympathetic to Mr. Broom," said Frank Jackson, one of Broom's attorneys who set up the news conference. "I think generally the Texas mentality is that you should come to the aid of other people."
So many people called Broom's parents, Larry and Jane Broom, with offers of support that they opened a defense fund at a bank to defray legal costs.
Sharon Edwards, the dead man's estranged wife, wondered why Irving police released Broom, leaving the responsibility for whether charges should be brought to a grand jury.
"This man should be in jail. He should not be running around shooting people. Eddie is not going on trial. Eddie's dead," she said in a telephone interview with the Dallas Times Herald from her home in Killeen.
"The point is you cannot let a person in America walk around and shoot anybody. That's my point, and that's all I have to say. Something has to be done, you can't just take the law into your own hands."
Broom was tense and worried Thursday, and seemed on the verge of tears in talking about how his co-workers at the Xerox Corp. in Irving were rallying around him.
Broom said he was a little perplexed by all the attention he had been getting. He was just trying to help someone, being what he called "a good Samaritan."
"I don't consider myself any sort of vigilante," he said. "I don't consider myself any sort of hero."
"I'm not Charles Bronson," Broom said of the actor who played a criminal-killing citizen in the "Deathwish" movie series. "I'm not going to save the world."