The headstone in Ewing Cemetery bears three likenesses of the young man beneath it. His poem is etched into the granite. His rap moniker, “Brilly Da Prince,” is carved above his name. But nearly 2,000 miles away in Albuquerque, the questions that haunt his grave remain stubbornly unanswered.
One year has passed since Airman Brion Teel-Scott was shot and killed by members of his own squadron, the very security forces he was tasked with joining to help protect Kirtland Air Force Base. He was 28 years old. It was his birthday.
The official account, stitched together from preliminary Albuquerque police reports and the Air Force’s sparse releases, tells only what the killers who chased him were willing to say.
Around midnight on Feb. 22, 2025, Teel-Scott drove up to the Truman Gate. His vehicle registration had expired. Military police, members of the 377th Security Forces Squadron, decided to search his car before it was to be towed.
Under the spare tire, they found a bag of cannabis.
When they moved to detain him, Teel-Scott ran.
Seven members of his own squadron chased him off base—on foot and in SUVs—across Gibson Boulevard into a neighborhood of apartments and fast-food restaurants.
They cornered him behind a car in a private driveway.
What happened next depends entirely on which pursuer was speaking. The truth is buried in Ewing Cemetery, along with Albert Einstein, DJ Father Shaheed, and Sarah Dash.
One airman told Albuquerque police that Teel-Scott, hiding behind the vehicle, pleaded with them to call city police, arguing the military had no jurisdiction off base.
He asked them to call “about seven times,” the airman said, and promised that if they backed up, he would show his hands and comply. The same airman said he never saw a gun in Teel-Scott’s hand. He heard a click, like a firearm malfunctioning, and then the shooting began.
Another airwoman told detectives there was no ambiguity. She said Teel-Scott fired first, that she saw muzzle flashes, and that he got off ten rounds before the seven security forces members returned fire.
A sergeant described a different sequence: after the initial volley, he walked up to Teel-Scott, who lay on the ground, and kicked a gun away from him. Then, he told police, Teel-Scott started moving, “and then shots were fired again.”
In that second round, the sergeant realized he had been shot in the hand.
“I think these officers should be court-martialed,” said Joseph Marrone, the Philadelphia attorney representing the Teel-Scott family.
When Albuquerque police arrived around 2 a.m., they found a chaotic scene.
Bullets had torn into an apartment and hit a gas line. The hissing leak forced the evacuation of the entire complex.
An officer moved Teel-Scott’s body from where he lay in the driveway to the street, between the apartment building and a Taco Bell, to get him away from the gas.
One of the airmen, when asked by an APD officer if he was the shooter, offered a chilling response that captured the collective nature of the violence: “We all shot, sir.”
The autopsy, released in June through a public records request, documented the final toll: at least sixteen bullets struck Teel-Scott. Three entered his back.
The projectiles pierced his lungs, stomach, liver, and intestines. They broke both his arms, both his legs, multiple ribs, and his shoulder. A toxicology report showed he had likely smoked cannabis shortly before his death.
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations took over the case from the Albuquerque Police, as if the killers are qualified to investigate themselves.
The airmen who fired their weapons were assigned to administrative duties pending the investigation’s completion. And there, for the last twelve months, the official accounting has largely stopped.
Kirtland Air Force Base has refused to say how many airmen fired their weapons, how many bullets each fired, what kind of guns they used, or whether Teel-Scott ever discharged his own weapon.
The Air Force confirmed he had a gun but has declined to answer the most basic questions: Did he use it? Was it brandished?
The family’s attorney has reviewed the evidence compiled through public records requests and posted at the Kirtland Files website, a collection of police reports, crime scene photographs, body camera footage, and 911 calls.
He alleges a cover-up.
“There’s clearly a major cover-up at this point, and we’re hoping that the military is going to come forward and give us full transparency,” Marrone said last summer. He plans to file a wrongful death petition.
The questions extend beyond the shooting itself. Under the Posse Comitatus Act, federal military personnel are generally prohibited from acting as civilian law enforcement outside military jurisdiction.
The chase and killing occurred entirely off base, on city streets, over an expired registration and a small amount of marijuana.
Body camera footage shows Teel-Scott wearing thick winter gloves throughout the incident, raising questions about how he could have fired a weapon.
Shawn Scott, Brion’s father and a veteran himself, sits nearly 2,000 miles away in New Jersey, staring at his son’s car in the driveway. He goes through his belongings. He remembers the funeral—the more than 200 visitors who came to pay respects to a young man who wrote poetry, who rapped, who talked people out of suicide, and who became a father just nine months before he was killed.
“Bad people don’t get funeral send-offs like that,” he said. “My son wasn’t no thug, wasn’t no gang member. My son was a great dude. Now, whatever happened with him in the military? OK, he lacked the discipline for the military—you kick him out; you don’t kill him.”
For a year, the Trump administration has maintained what critics call an opaque refusal to address the case. The White House has issued no statements. The Pentagon has offered no public updates. The Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations has not announced any findings, any charges, or any timeline for resolution.
On Capitol Hill, members of Congress who delivered impassioned speeches following other police killings have remained largely silent on the death of an airman at the hands of his fellow defenders.
The Congressional Black Caucus, which has documented racial disparities in policing, has not held hearings.
The New Jersey delegation, which includes Sen. Cory Booker, Rep. Herb Conaway, and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, has not held town halls demanding answers for a constituent’s son.
The contrast with other shootings could not be starker.
When two National Guard members were shot in Washington in November, President Trump swiftly condemned the “terrorist” attack, ordered 500 additional troops to the capital, and demanded the perpetrator face justice. The full machinery of the federal government mobilized to respond.
Airman Brion Teel-Scott received no such response: no presidential condemnation, no surge of resources, no demand for swift accountability.
His father put it plainly: “They didn’t treat my son like he was one of theirs. They treated him like he was a stranger. I mean, he was pursued like a stranger.”
The investigation continues.
The airmen remain on administrative duty.
The family waits.
A headstone in New Jersey, three images of a young man watch over a grave that should not exist—a permanent reminder of a birthday that became a death day, and a country that has not yet decided whether the lives of those who serve are worth the answers they are due.