Mother Says Justice Is Stalled Out 4 Years After Son’s Murder in Tuscaloosa
A mother's cries for justice are growing louder, not softer, four years after her son was fatally shot while walking around the Tuscaloosa Strip four years ago.
There has never been any question over who shot 19-year-old Schuyler Donta Bradley, and the suspect, Zachary Profozich, was charged with murder as soon as Bradley died. But Profozich was immediately released on a bond set at $150,000 and allowed to return to California to live with his parents.
As the homicide approaches its grim fourth anniversary, the case seems stalled out completely as Profozich, now 26, remains charged with murder but out on bond on the other side of America.
The status quo is not enough for Bradley's mother, Daphne Groff, who aims to shake things up until the case is moving again. Her efforts are also bringing more attention to problems within the justice system in Tuscaloosa County which are manifesting in other high-profile murder cases here.
This deep dive into the case, its status and the issues it reveals comes after two interviews with the victim's mother, Daphne Groff, a review of available court records and a conversation with District Attorney Hays Webb.
"IS THAT A BB GUN?"
Daphne Groff told the Thread she raised Schuyler - pronounced Skylar - alongside his older brother and a pair of younger siblings in Indianapolis.
She said she spent most of that time as a single mother, which made their family tight-knit, and she was still acclimating to the absence in the house when Schuyler joined his older brother to study at Indiana University.
"When they got to college, I felt like that was the first time he got to have his own identity, even though his big brother was already there. He got into a different fraternity and he finally got his own identity," she said. "It was so wonderful to watch unravel but it was hard, too, because our family had never been apart. We'd never been separated."
The night the 19-year-old was fatally shot is one any mother could imagine her son having on any given weekend in Tuscaloosa in the fall.
Schuyler had traveled to the Druid City on a Thursday to link up with his friend Jayden George, a redshirt freshman quarterback, and watch fellow Indianapolis native Emil Ekiyor Jr. and the Crimson Tide take on the Georgia Bulldogs in Bryant Denny Stadium.
He wouldn't make the game.
"I spoke to him at like 9:45 p.m. on Thursday, and he was already in Tuscaloosa," Groff recalled. "He was out with his friends and I just told him to have fun, be safe."
A few hours after that call, around 1:30 in the morning on Friday, October 16th, 2020, Bradley and two friends not affiliated with the football program were walking down University Boulevard when they encountered Profozich and another man, Griffin Ridgeway.
A since-settled civil lawsuit claims Profozich was intoxicated after a day of heavy drinking.
Their interactions were reportedly caught on camera, although Groff said she's never seen the footage herself. Instead, investigators with the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit have described it to her.
According to information from documents filed in the criminal case and lawsuit, there was an altercation before the shooting, and Groff said Ridgeway shoved one of Bradley's friends, Mitchell Cross, to the ground.
Groff said her son, a proud defender of others, turned around and asked Ridgeway and Profozich what their problem was. That's when Profozich allegedly drew a .357 revolver and aimed it at Bradley.
The bereaved mother said her son had never handled a firearm. She said life and gun culture in Indianapolis were far different than in Alabama and Schuyler must not have expected a confrontation on the sidewalk to lead to gunplay.
"One of Schuyler's friends has told me he thinks Schuyler said, 'Is that a BB gun?'" Groff recalled. "I don't know what made Zach pull it out. Schuyler and his friends never moved, never touched anything, didn't swing on them, nothing. So why did Zach feel that he needed to shoot? Schuyler asked him that question and then instantly, I guess to show Schuyler the gun was real, he shot him in the abdomen."
Bradley collapsed beside his two friends in the 1700 block of University Boulevard, where downtown starts to really give way to the Strip. Ridgeway and Profozich fled the scene.
AIDED BY ANGELS
Groff remembers the ensuing hours in snapshots of unthinkable motherly pain made somewhat more bearable by the "angels" she encountered on her way to Tuscaloosa to say goodbye to her son.
First, she got that dreaded phone call - not from the police, but from her oldest son Ghiche, who'd gotten the news first.
Then a series of other calls with surgeons at DCH Regional Medical Center, who told Groff that her son was stable but in bad shape and in a medically induced coma. She needed to get her affairs in order and get to Tuscaloosa, a city she could neither pronounce nor find on a map.
Finding care for her other two children at home and booking a flight during the dog days of the COVID-19 pandemic was no easy task, but Groff said Ghiche got her to the airport, where her employer had booked a flight to Texas and from there on to Birmingham.
A stranger in the airport consoled Groff as she was hit by the first waves of grief ahead of so many more to come. She gave Groff a Bible and a journal to compose her thoughts and talked with her on the flight until they split ways in Texas.
Groff said she met her second angel in the form of a man named Mike Thrasher in the air heading to Birmingham. Mike was sitting beside her, decked out in Alabama gear and close enough to overhear her describe her situation to a flight attendant who was working out how to get Groff off the plane before anyone else debarked.
"This man sitting next to me called her over and said, 'Excuse me, but I'm actually going to be the first person off this plane,' and as I wondered who he thinks he is, giving him some side-eye about this audacity, he goes on and says 'because I'm gonna take this woman to Tuscaloosa to see her son.'" Groff remembered. "In all this, I didn't realize the logistics of it, that I had a 60-mile drive."
Thrasher and Groff navigated the clogged car rental lines and were able to get a manager to allow them to skip the queue and leave in a pickup truck with Mike behind the wheel.
"He's doing like 109 miles per hour in rush-hour traffic at 3 or 4 in the afternoon in Birmingham, the sun's beating directly in our faces and I don't think he could even see," she laughed. "I mean, I think he cut 15 minutes off of what Google Maps said was gonna happen, but he got me there."
Mike refused any money for the ride and dropped Groff off to see the most difficult sight she would ever face.
SAYING GOODBYE
Groff said she found a tough scene, where a young nurse was praying over Schuyler's body and a family friend who was able to beat Groff to the hospital sat in shock with her family.
"I saw Schuyler and smelled the stench of the blood, saw the facial expressions on my friend who'd gone to be with him. Seeing Schuyler, I knew I wasn't leaving with my kid," Groff said. "But he still was holding on. Even though they had pumped a hundred-something liters of blood into him to keep him alive because the internal bleeding was so severe, he was holding on for us."
Groff admitted she once harbored resentment that DCH could not do more to save him, but she said after four years, she has accepted that Schulyer would not have survived being transported to UAB in Birmingham and no procedure could have undone the damage already inflicted.
"I looked at his hands, where there was dried blood under his cuticles, and at his feet, his hairy little toes," she said. "Then I lifted up the sheet and got to see what Zach did to my kid, and it was horrific. He was - I would call it Saran Wrapped because they couldn't sew him back up, so I could see his insides. And some machines were just taking blood back and forth, back and forth to keep him alive."
Schuyler survived on life support until his older brother, Ghiche, could get to Tuscaloosa, too, where he and his mom faced more impossible decisions.
Ultimately, they pulled life support and allowed Schulyer to die. The 19-year-old was an organ donor, but had been too damaged in the shooting to harvest anything except his eyes - a sacrifice Groff said she just couldn't make.
"One thing he always had was those big green eyes, they were one of his best features besides his big dimples," Groff said. "I just couldn't do it."
An excruciating time passed.
"Tick tock, tick tock, and he wouldn't let go," Groff remembered. "There was fluid, sometimes, coming from his mouth and nose and I would wipe that away. I smelled his hair and got the scent of Cantu, the product all my kids use - and I kissed him and whispered it's OK, you can go."
Bradley died at DCH, and the pain was just beginning. During her interview, Groff recalled standing with Bradley's birth father over his body spread out on "an adult-sized cookie sheet."
A lack of cargo planes during the pandemic made getting Schuyler home to Indianapolis another logistical nightmare.
The grieving mother said she had to spend time personally preparing his body and hair for the funeral because his death, autopsy, and the long journey home made the task too difficult for morticians to perform alone.
Every day, new misery.
Now, as the fourth anniversary of his death approaches, most of that grief has been replaced by anger that her son's killer has not yet answered for the act.
A STALLED CASE
The case against Zachary James Profozich is not outwardly complicated. Witnesses and video evidence reportedly concur that he shot Bradley after the brief altercation between the two parties.
Profozich fled the area and ditched the .357 somewhere not far from the crime scene, but told Ridgeway where he left it, and it was Ridgeway who led investigators there to recover the gun.
Profozich, who was 22 at the time, told both his girlfriend and Ridgeway that he thought Bradley was pulling his own weapon, but Groff said that's not plausible. There was nothing in Schuyler's hand but a bag of chips - the 19-year-old was never armed.
Profozich was arrested before Bradley even died, and the charges against him were upgraded to murder immediately. But Profozich retained defense attorney Mary Turner and was released from jail on a $150,000 bond the same day the charges were upgraded.
On October 20th, 2020, just three days after Bradley's death, Turner filed a request to allow Profozich to leave Tuscaloosa and move in with his parents in Orange County, California.
District Judge James Gentry granted the request on the same day, and since that time, Profozich has lived on the other side of the country.
At a preliminary hearing in November 2020, Gentry bound the case over to a grand jury and less than a month later, one convened and officially indicted Profozich on one count of murder and one count of carrying a pistol without a license, which was still illegal in Alabama in 2020.
Indictments move criminal cases from District Court to Circuit Court, so jurisdiction transferred from Gentry to Circuit Judge Daniel Pruet, but Pruet recused himself in February 2021. The case was re-assigned to Circuit Judge Bradley Almond in March 2021.
Profozich waived his right to a formal arraignment in April 2021 and pleaded not guilty.
And that, folks, is the last time the murder case against him saw any movement at all - more than 1,250 days ago, on April 19th, 2021.
According to court records, nothing has changed since then. No motions have been filed, no hearings held, no trial set - nothing has changed since then.
Groff said pleas for more information or for any action in the case have gone unanswered and her building anger has led to several unproductive-then-hostile exchanges with staff in the district attorney's office, who will no longer communicate with her on the phone.
"We felt defeated, but now we're angry. There's no reason for this. The gloves are off and I want to expose the fact that people are acting as if Schuyler doesn't matter, as if his death isn't significant, as if Zach's freedoms trump my son's death," Groff said. "He is out here doing things my son will never be able to do. Of course I'm angry at Hays Webb. Of course I'm upset no one is representing us. What am I supposed to be, butterflies and rainbows? This was my son!"
Later in our conversations, Groff wanted to be clear her frustrations are very specifically focused.
"What happened to my son is not a reflection on the people of Tuscaloosa, nor its police department, because I feel like they did their job well and quickly," she said. "My only complaints are with the judicial system that is supposed to be representing my son.
And there's no excuse that they can give me anymore."
UPDATE: On Wednesday, October 16th, this case was tentatively set for a December jury trial. The setting came five days after this and other reports about the state of the case were published.
NAACP WEIGHS IN
Feeling unheard and ignored in Alabama, Groff has been working with the local chapter of the NAACP to find out what must be done for the case against her son's killer to advance.
Chapter President Lisa Young called for District Attorney Webb and Judge Almond to do whatever is necessary to move this case along and asked why Profozich, a white murder suspect, has been allowed to live in California for the last four years.
Her statement is included in its entirety below:
“I am deeply troubled by the delays in prosecuting Zachary Profozich for the tragic murder of Schuyler Bradley. 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.
It is appalling that Profozich, the man charged with Schuyler's murder, was allowed to post bond and has yet to stand 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. 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.
I am convinced that if the roles were reversed—if Schuyler had been White and Profozich Black—there would have been no bond, 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. For example, Darrius Miles, a young Black man, has been held without bond for nearly two years, despite not being accused of killing anyone.
The fact that Profozich consumed alcohol for over seven hours leading up to the incident, combined with the report that he obtained a firearm from a ‘friend,’ adds further concern about how this case is being handled. Schuyler’s family, friends, and our community deserve justice, and they deserve a legal process that does not appear to be stalled by indifference or inefficiency. We demand a fair and timely trial for Profozich and full accountability from those responsible for prosecuting this case."
DISTRICT ATTORNEY CITES DEEPER PROBLEMS
District attorney Hayes Webb took a call about the case on Thursday, and although he was limited in what he could say about pending prosecution, he made some important notes.
First, Zach Profozich was arrested in 2020, before the Alabama legislature proposed and voters approved Aniah's Law, which gives judges a little more discretion about granting bail to suspects in extremely serious cases.
When the homicide happened, Profozich was constitutionally entitled to the bond that was set for him just like anyone else charged with murder before Aniah's Law.
After he was out, it was also not uncommon to permit him to leave the state - Profozich is like any other defendant and presumed innocent until proven guilty.
As for why the case has not budged in 40 months, Webb said there are many factors, not least of which is the understaffing and underfunding of the DA's office, where his prosecutors are often facing a backlog of several hundred if not more than 1,000 felony cases.
It's the same root problem that has contributed to bogging down the case against Luther Bernard Watkins, Jr., who killed a Tuscaloosa Police Officer in 2019 and has been jailed for more than five years without a trial.
It's part of why the case against Darius Miles, who Young mentioned in her statement, seems to be moving at the pace of molasses as he nears his second year in the Tuscaloosa County Jail without bond.
Webb agreed to extensively discuss the DA's office, the challenges they face and the efficiencies already in place to make the prosecutorial process as fast as possible in a later feature from the Thread. We aim to make that happen in October.
HOPES MOVING AHEAD
Since Groff connected with the NAACP, the Thread and other media outlets in Tuscaloosa and Indianapolis to renew interest in the case, she is hopeful Judge Almond and DA Webb can get the trial docketed and either push Profozich toward a plea deal or finally get him in front of a jury.
"All I want is for Zach to no longer be free," Groff said. "It's never going to be the justice that me and my family deserve or Schuyler deserves, but that's unrealistic for almost anyone. But Zach does not deserve to be out here free, living his best life, when Schuyler no longer has his."
I asked Groff if there was any message she wanted to communicate to those reading this account of her plea for closure and justice.
"When you are a parent and you lose a child, it is a pain that only someone else who has been through it could understand. It is a punch in the gut, a chokehold, and no swallow can clear your throat. It is unbearable," she said. "Justice should prevail, because this person, my son, did not deserve this. Zach played God. My son didn't die in a car wreck. He didn't die from an illness. Someone else took his life, so I need the judge and prosecutors to hear that the victim's family, we deserve justice no matter what it looks like. It will never be what I would want it to be, but he doesn't deserve to be free."
For updates on this case and other news from West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.
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