Mickey and Valerie Redus remember the moment they were told their son was gone.
"He said that Cameron had been killed, and I just said, 'No, no,'" Valerie Redus said.
Six months ago, Cameron Redus was shot and killed off campus by a University of the Incarnate Word police officer. The Reduses want to know why.
"I thank our holy God for giving us the privilege of raising him. We had him for 23 years," Valerie Redus said.
The Reduses, who recently sat down for an exclusive interview with KSAT 12 News anchor Steve Spriester, said Cameron loved the outdoors, was funny and special, a convergent media major who dreamed of a life behind the camera.
"You want to know about our son? He was extraordinary, he was extraordinary at everything he did," Valerie Redus said.
It is a much different picture from one painted, at least partly by the university he loved, of a drunken college student who had a campus police officer fearing for his life.
"I don't believe in Jekyll and Hydes, and I just can not envision Cameron turning into a completely different person than what he was known to be to his family, to his friends, and his instructors and his bosses and everybody that knew him as the young man that he was," Mickey Redus said.
In the early morning of Dec. 6, 2013, Cameron was shot by UIW Cpl. Christopher Carter just steps from Redus' apartment.
A police report from the Alamo Heights Police Department details Carter's side. According to the report, he was attempting to arrest Cameron for driving while intoxicated, a scuffle ensued and he "had to shoot."
A toxicology report showed Redus was legally drunk and had traces of marijuana in his system.
"He made a mistake when he got behind the wheel of a car, we admit that, we admit that totally, but whatever happened after that, does not deserve five shots," Valerie Redus said.
The autopsy conducted by the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office revealed that five shots hit Cameron in the eye, chest, back, elbow and hip. The report states some of the shots came from a "sharp downward angle."
"The downward angles of those shots don't lie. In the eye and out the base of the neck, was a sharply downward angle. Nothing new can justify those five shots," Valerie Redus said.
"There's anger, there's the indignation of what was done, the fact that an unarmed young man steps away from his apartment, ended up dead," Mickey Redus said.
Since filing a civil lawsuit the Redus' have planted a tree in their son's memory and have been banned from the campus.
As for UIW officials, they declined to comment, but did answer the Reduses' lawsuit Tuesday, backing Carter and alleging Carter's use of force was "reasonably necessary to respond to Redus' repeated sustained physical attacks," and that Carter feared bodily injury or death.
The entire interview with Cameron Redus' mother and father will be posted on KSAT.com after Part Two of their story airs Thursday.