Mother Still Seeking Justice Four Years After Teen Slain In Tuscaloosa

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

- Maya Angelou, quoted in Schuyler Bradley's obituary.

TUSCALOOSA, AL — In a quiet room in Leppert Funeral Home in Indianapolis, Daphne Groff gently applied oil sheen to her 19-year-old son's hair and took special care to rub out the flecks of funeral home makeup from his beard.

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The grieving mother recalled how Schuyler Donta Bradley's face was barely recognizable and how his body was badly battered from all it had gone through in transit and processing during the week since he was pronounced dead at DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa on Oct. 17, 2020.

"His body had been through hell," she told Patch. "But I started oiling up his little goatee and oiling up his hair and combing his eyebrows."

Bradley, an informatics major at Indiana University and a member of IU’s Acacia fraternity, had been fatally shot in the stomach while in Alabama visiting friends and planning to attend the Crimson Tide's highly anticipated matchup with No. 3 Georgia.

Groff said her son had been given tickets to the game thanks to former Crimson Tide quarterback and fellow Indianapolis native Jayden George — the son of former No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick Jeff George, who played 12 seasons in the NFL.

As Groff planned the final arrangements for her son back in Indianapolis, his suspected killer stood charged with murder and had already been released on bond.

And as she stood over her son's body, Groff's phone began buzzing.

On the other line was a friend who told Groff that reports had been circulating in Alabama saying that Bradley had a gun in his possession when he was shot following a brief altercation on University Boulevard.

This would prove the first of many emotional hurdles the mother would face in the years to come, yet she continues to fight for justice for her son to this very moment.

"I started to feel sick because we have been an anti-gun family our whole lives," she said. "As a single mom with kids, we didn't live in an environment where we ever truly needed it. I didn't even buy them BB guns as kids. That's not his story. That's not who my kid was. But I couldn't defend him because it was already out there."

The allegations of her son having a gun on him when he was shot were eventually recanted, she said, but the sting from that day is as sharp for Groff in the present as it was four years ago.

"I'm just wondering why I am fighting for justice for my son when that's the district attorney's job?" she asked. "Why am I out here finding avenues for our case to move this along?"

California native Zachary Profozich, who was 22 at the time of the shooting, was charged with Bradley's murder after first being charged with attempted murder in the hours following the shooting.

Profozich's defense attorney, Mary Turner of the Tuscaloosa-based Turner Law Group, told Patch that her client has been out after posting a $150,000 bond shortly following the shooting.

This murder case, like many others, is pending trial.

Indeed, Bradley's mother told Patch she has been left frustrated and feeling helpless due to the slow progression of the case against Profozich. It also comes at a time when several other high-profile murder cases have yet to make their way to trial — namely the 2019 shooting death of Tuscaloosa Police Investigator Dornell Cousette and the 2023 killing of 23-year-old Jamea Harris on Grace Street.

Suspects in both of those unrelated cases remain behind bars, each charged with capital murder.

Groff said her son's murder case is being prosecuted at a similar pace before lamenting that the man accused of killing her son is out on bond and free to live on the other side of the country in his home state of California while he awaits trial.

"Where we're at [in the case] is nowhere," Groff said.

Timeline

A civil suit that has since been settled in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court provides additional insight into the hours leading up to the shooting.

Groff told Patch she had signed a non-disclosure agreement after the civil suit against Profozich and The Bear Trap was settled and was not at liberty to discuss further details.

However, the original complaint says that on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2020, Profozich was present at the popular college bar between 5:25 p.m. and 8:11 p.m.

There is a half-hour gap in the timeline before Profozich was reportedly seen again in the bar from 8:44 p.m. until 1:13 a.m. the next morning.

The civil suit goes on to allege that Profozich consumed alcohol at Bear Trap for a total of seven hours and 15 minutes. In the civil suit, attorneys for Groff argued that The Bear Trap had continued to serve Profozich well after it was visibly apparent that he was intoxicated.

Nevertheless, Profozich is said to have left The Bear Trap at or around 1:13 a.m., making his way west for roughly half a mile down University Boulevard in the direction of downtown Tuscaloosa.

Profozich was accompanied by Griffin Ridgeway and, a little more than 15 minutes later, the two men made contact with Bradley and two of his friends on the sidewalk opposite the University Club.

According to a deposition and charge sheet written by Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit Investigator James Lake, an altercation ensued that resulted in Profozich shooting Bradley in the stomach with a .357 revolver at around 1:38 a.m.

Investigator Lake later claimed that Profozich and Ridgeway could both been seen in a surveillance video running from the scene after Bradley fell to the ground next to his two friends.

Groff told Patch that instead of a gun found at her son's side after he was shot, it was actually a bag of chips.

As a quick side note: It should be pointed out here that despite her frustrations with the way the investigation has gone, Groff sang Lake's praises for his commitment to the case and expressed gratitude for his willingness to be so responsive and patient.

Groff told Patch that, to the best of her knowledge, Ridgeway has cooperated with investigators and is expected to testify against Profozich if the case makes it to trial.

Indeed, it was Ridgeway who took Violent Crimes Unit investigators to the location where Profozich told him he left the .357 after the shooting and the handgun was successfully recovered.

Ridgeway told investigators that after the shooting, Profozich told him he shot the victim because he believed he was reaching for a gun.

What's more, Profozich's girlfriend also told police that Profozich told her that he shot Bradley because he was afraid he was reaching for a gun.

Conversely, Bradley's two friends both stated they were with the victims of a belligerent assault before observing a "white male in dark clothing" shoot Bradley after a brief argument.

Returning to the moments immediately following the shooting, though, Bradley was transported from the scene to DCH Regional Medical Center, where he immediately entered surgery.

Bradley was then placed in a medically induced coma until further surgeries could be completed.

A petition started by Bradley's sister, which has received nearly 1,800 signatures, says he suffered from internal bleeding after being shot and was resuscitated twice, which caused him to lose oxygen to his brain. This began to result in organ failure and Bradley was kept on life support until his mother arrived at his side in Tuscaloosa.

The decision was then made by Groff and her children to cease life-saving measures and let Bradley die peacefully.

Schuyler Bradley was pronounced dead at 2:15 a.m. on the morning of the historic Alabama football game he had been so excited to attend with his friends.

'He's never mattered to them'

While Groff has been vocal in her frustrations with the prosecution of her son's alleged killer, Bradley's mother was grateful for the work put in by investigators on the case.

"He's never mattered to them," she told Patch of the Tuscaloosa County District Attorney's Office. "The Tuscaloosa Police Department did their job. It might not be the same story for everybody else, but Tuscaloosa Police and homicide, they did not fail me.

"[Investigator Lake] answered my phone calls every day and would call me back," Groff added. "He would tell me 'it's ok,' and he heard how defeated I was with the DA's office, so he knew I had nowhere else to go. Even if it was something like just telling me the laws in Alabama."

Groff then insisted that the District Attorney's Office, tasked with prosecuting her son's murder case, was a different story.

Things got chippy as Groff persisted in her push for answers, providing Patch with the example that she wanted for her family to see the videos of Bradley being shot before having to see them for the first time in court.

"This never happened," she said. "Then they blamed it on that they were no longer having conversations with me because I was becoming confrontational. Am I supposed to just sit on my hands? This is my child, he's sitting in my office on a shelf. You're supposed to be representing him and you're not. Nothing has moved since April of 2021."

Groff provided Patch with copies of email correspondence with the DA's Office and said that communications broke down after she referred to one employee as an "Uncle Tom."

"I received your voicemail message today," District Attorney Hays Webb wrote Groff in an email dated Dec. 3, 2023. "I understand that there have been numerous communications with staff and lawyers at our office, and that you have cussed, name-called, and made racist remarks. This is consistent with the voicemail message that I heard; because of this, I am emailing instead of calling. Please reply with any questions that you have, and we will do our best to answer them. We are sorry for your loss."

Although he would not speak to the specifics of this or any other pending case, Webb told Patch that he agrees that this type of delay is problematic for a number of reasons and that the community suffers as a result.

“I certainly understand that victims, or victims’ families, suffer to an even greater extent, and we are all affected," he said. "It’s emblematic of larger issues in our criminal justice system. There’s no single cause, and I hope that public awareness creates some motivation for leaders to collaborate and find solutions.”

Angels & Allies

Blessings often come from the strangest of places and, despite the heartbreak of losing her son and the frustrations around his case, Groff has been able to find plenty of good in the aftermath, almost like it was meant to be.

Indeed, Groff told Patch about her trip to Tuscaloosa to be by her son's side in his final moments and the interactions along the way that gave her pause.

Enter: Mike Thrasher.

A district manager for AFLAC who graduated from Central High School in Tuscaloosa and lives in Houston, Texas, Thrasher was on that connecting flight from Texas to Birmingham with Groff, who remembered him as "not very approachable" and "covered head to toe in Alabama gear for the game."

"I'll never forget him," Groff said.

Groff insisted that Thrasher seemed like the last person willing to show warmth and compassion traveling on the eve of such a big football game and she said little about her reasons for traveling to Alabama.

"It's time for us to land and an airline stewardess comes up and I'm going to be the first to get off the plane," she recalled. "Then he tells the stewardess 'Who in the hell do you think you are? I'm getting off first because I'm going to take this young lady to see her baby."

That much was surprising, but Groff was running blind, not knowing what to expect on the ground in Alabama and she hadn't planned for a rental car.

But as serendipity would have it, Thrasher had reservations for a rental, loaded Groff up and broke just about every traffic law imaginable between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.

"I needed somebody like that who was preparing me for the worst thing in my life," she said.

Groff has also found local support in the town where her son was killed, namely from the Tuscaloosa County Branch NAACP.

“I am deeply troubled by the delays in prosecuting Zachary Profozich for the tragic murder of Schuyler Bradley," Branch President Lisa Young said in a statement to Patch. "The lack of urgency in this case raises serious concerns about the efficiency and priorities of the District Attorney’s Office. Schuyler Bradley was a young man with a bright future, a scholar-athlete visiting Tuscaloosa, whose life was senselessly taken."

Young and the organization specifically took issue with the fact that Profozich was charged with murder, yet allowed to post bond and still hasn't stood trial.

"Adding to this injustice, Profozich was granted permission to leave the state and reside across the country after being indicted by a Grand Jury," Young said. "This decision is sickening — a complete slap in the face to Schuyler’s family and friends, who continue to suffer his loss. Allowing him to walk free and live far from the community where he committed this heinous act undermines the seriousness of the crime and the pursuit of justice."

Young then said that she was convinced that if the racial roles were reversed, there would have been no bond set or it would have been set at a substantially higher amount.

"We see this disparity too often, and it reflects a disturbing pattern of racial inequity in the criminal justice system," Young said, before referring to the capital murder case against former Alabama basketball player Darius Miles, who has been in the Tuscaloosa County Jail for almost two years after a friend was accused of using his handgun during a fatal shooting off of The Strip. "For example, Darius Miles, a young Black man, has been held without bond for nearly two years, despite not being accused of killing anyone."

As Patch previously reported, Miles has been denied bond on more than one occasion and his case is still far from going to trial.

Reflections

Groff was frustrated during several conversations with Tuscaloosa Patch, but warmed up at numerous turns when she talked about her son as a "protector."

It's a trait that was lauded during a candlelight vigil that Groff attended in Bloomington, Indiana, following Bradley's death. She is also of the belief that her son died embodying his values.

"He did it for his sister when she was bullied on the bus," Groff said. "He did it with his friends, his fraternity brothers. He just had this trait, I guess because he was bullied for being a chunky kid growing up."

That chunky kid would grow up to become a notable athlete in wrestling, basketball and football, not to mention a popular commodity in the community.

Bradley played two years of football at Cathedral High School before transferring to Carmel High School, where he graduated in 2019.

After high school, Bradley enrolled at IU to study business, before changing his major to informatics. During this time, his mother was going through a rough patch in a relationship and her son assured her that "she didn't need no man" and that he would take care of her.

Following his death, a GoFundMe online fundraising drive was launched to cover Bradley's funeral expenses, going on to raise over $64,000 from nearly 2,000 donors.

Coupled with a settlement reached in the civil suit in the case, Bradley has kept good on his promise to his mother to be her protector.

"He told me 'You don't have to settle for less. I will take care of you,'" Groff said. "And now I'm living in a brand new house I would have never been able to afford and it's because of him. He's still taking care of me."

Schuyler Donta Bradley is survived by his mother; brothers, Ghiche Bradley Jr. and Dana Hyde; sister, Jersey Rodgers; grandmother (Nana), Gloria Belletete; grandfather (Papa), Derek Love; uncle, Ryan Kilbride; aunt, Jessica Dierckman; the Groff and Montoya family; cousins Jordann and Jaxson Kilbride; father, Ghiche Bradley Sr.

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