Before Tuscaloosa police showed up at the door, Jacoya Clark already knew.

On that day last December, word spread quickly that a police officer in Tuscaloosa had shot and killed someone during a traffic stop, a young man wearing red shoes.

Her 24-year-old son, Tristan, wasn’t answering his phone.

“He dealt with a lot in his life,” Clark said in a recent interview with AL.com at her home in Moundville. “Came in fighting, and I felt like he left here, fighting, too.”

Hours before police delivered the news, Clark arrived home from work and found a gathering of friends and relatives in her front yard, there to offer comfort.

Nearly five months later, Clark still hasn’t been told the name of the officer who shot and killed her son, a father of three.

She questions what happened, why two narcotics officers working undercover stopped the car, why one fired at Tristan in the back seat. There’s no body camera footage to answer her questions.

In March, a grand jury declined to indict the officers who were involved with shooting Tristan. The Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office, which investigated the case, as well as the district attorney’s office and the grand jury all found no evidence that the officers did anything criminal.

“My family is very disappointed that the officers were not indicted but we are not discouraged in seeking justice for my baby Tristan,” Clark said. “The truth will be revealed and those responsible will be held accountable.”

Reginald McDaniel, the Birmingham attorney representing Clark’s family, said that his legal team and the family are waiting on autopsy reports before deciding whether to move forward with litigation.

Police have said that Clark had outstanding warrants, and that he pulled out a gun during the traffic stop.

McDaniel has disputed that, saying that two eyewitnesses who were in the car told his legal team that Clark never reached for a gun and his hands were raised when the officer shot him.

McDaniel previously told AL.com that police told him and Clark’s family that the undercover narcotics officers stopped the car for a window tint violation but didn’t find any drugs.

“My grandmama always told us that we all have to leave here, but it’s how we leave that hurts the most,” Clark said. “I can only imagine what was going through my child’s head in that car. I know one thing, he would say, ‘If my mama was here, y’all would not be doing this to me.’ I know he would say that, and I know he wanted his mama.”

In the days before he died, Tristan had been Christmas shopping for his three small children, his mother told AL.com. Clark said that the whole family had picked out matching pajamas. Tristan was especially looking forward to the holiday, his mother said, as it would be his newborn son’s first Christmas.

“He was like, ‘Mom, thank God I listened to you,’” Clark said, recalling one day when Tristan came in from shopping for gifts. “He said, “You taught me, always start early.” We laughed about it, and he was so excited about Christmas with the kids.”

Clark said her son was also looking forward to Christmas at home because he missed out on the holidays when he was in jail a couple years earlier for a robbery, court records show.

“From his last experience being locked up, I think he learned a lot and it made him family-oriented, more,” she said. “In his last days, he was so happy. He was really becoming the man that we raised him to be, and God created him to be. The father that he knew he was supposed to be.”

A few weeks before Tristan died, police pulled him over while he was driving his mother’s car near their neighborhood. In a Nov. 29 police report filed in court records, the officers said that they smelled marijuana and that Tristan failed to use a turn signal at an intersection. Clark was in the passenger seat and said she remembers multiple narcotics officers pulling Tristan out of the car.

Though the officers found marijuana and pills in a backpack in the trunk and arrested her son, Clark said she’s thankful to have been there that day to witness how the police behaved. She said they seized her gun — even though she had a permit — and didn’t return it for several months.

“When I think about that night, I always get so angry, because I saw what y’all were doing,” she said. “A bunch of y’all just violated my child, and that just hurt my feelings, hurt my heart.”

Clark recalled greeting her son in the hallway each morning before she left for work. She started off her day around 3:45 a.m. and Tristan often felt sick in the morning because of diabetes. But she looked forward to checking on him, and said he always had a smile.

But in the early morning of Dec. 20, Tristan was fast asleep in his room. She wanted to ask him to stay home with the younger kids until she returned from work. But it was so rare to see her son sleep through the night, so she let him rest.

“My baby was sick. And for them to take him from me…” Clark trailed off, crying, as Tristan’s 4-year-old daughter, Dreia, climbed into her lap and played games on a tablet.

“That hurt,” she said, between sobs. “That hurt.”

McDaniel, from his seat on the couch next to Clark, handed her a tissue.

“This is the part they don’t see when they do stuff like that,” he said. “The aftermath. The suffering of the family.”

Tristan was one of five siblings, on his mother’s side. When he was 13, Clark’s family lived in Northport, after she moved them from the west side of Tuscaloosa. She was working a lot, and even though she clung to her faith, some Sunday mornings she was too tired to wake up for church.

On those Sundays, Tristan would wake his younger brother up and get him ready without being asked. He’d take him across the street, climbing a fence to take the shortcut to the church, Clark said.

Now, Tristan’s youngest brother, who is 3, wakes up many mornings pointing to the doorknob to his old room. His kids miss him, too, Clark said.

“They miss him. He really loved these kids and spending time with these kids,” Clark said. “He’d get on the floor and roll around with them. That’s how he was.”

Clark is no stranger to grief. Her grandmother, father and niece had all passed away within the last two years. But losing her oldest son was the worst kind of pain she’s faced. Returning to life as normal has felt impossible, she said.

When Clark was pregnant with Tristan, she was in a bad car accident in 1999. She rushed to the hospital, and gave birth to him prematurely, at six pounds. She’s always called him her “gentle giant.”

“He was the one that comes in and brings up the whole house. He was caring, had respect, works hard, very sensitive, too,” she said. “He’s the one that is just like me. He has a very big heart. He doesn’t meet a stranger.”