Alabama basketball student manager confirms he was passenger during deadly shooting

Following an erroneous report by The New York Times, the actual passenger of Brandon Miller‘s vehicle has made his identity public. The reveal was made public by student manager Cooper Lee, who clarified his identity as the passenger during the deadly shooting after The Times reported that Alabama player Kai Spears was the passenger.

Spears denied his involvement in the entire situation and then sued The New York Times for failing to issue a retraction regarding their incorrect information. Lee acknowledged his own presence at the scene of the shooting in an email, confirming that it was him and not Spears who was in the vehicle.

During the fatal shooting back in January, one person was killed and Miller’s vehicle was struck by stray bullets during the incident. Now, the initially unknown passenger of Miller’s vehicle has been confirmed.

“I can confirm that I was the passenger in Brandon Miller’s car at the time of the shooting,” said Lee in an email sent to The Times.

“Mr. Lee, who is not accused of wrongdoing, declined to comment further beyond confirming that Mr. Spears was not in the car,” further explained The Times in a follow-up story.

Passenger during fatal shooting confirms identity

Earlier in the week, Alabama guard Kai Spears filed a lawsuit against The New York Times claiming libel and defamation stemming from a story connecting him to the January shooting, which involved former teammate Darius Miles and killed Jamea Harris. The lawsuit and resulting fallout prompted Lee to confirm his identity to The Times.

Spears stated in his lawsuit that him being falsely labelled as a passenger during the shooting “will forever label him as a person associated with a murder.” Spears’ lawsuit seeks damages for defamation and invasion of privacy. The lawsuit also disclosed that Lee was the actual passenger and he had gotten into Miller’s vehicle at 1:40 a.m. on Jan. 15 — right before the shooting occurred.

The Times issued a statement on the matter initially, confirming it plans to issue a correction to the original story from March, which said Spears was in Brandon Miller’s car the night of the shooting. It comes just a couple days after Spears sued the newspaper for $75,000 in damages for failing to issue a retraction for that article, the Tuscaloosa Patch reported.

“We have a longstanding policy of correcting errors,” Times spokesperson Danielle Rhodes Ha said in a statement. “Based on information in the affidavit and new reporting by our newsroom, we believe our original story was not accurate and plan to append an editor’s note to the story.”

On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this article.