Proof killer clean

[baller4life]

The man who police say shot and killed rapper Proof in a Detroit nightclub shootout acted lawfully in defense of another man, the county prosecutor said yesterday (May 30). But Mario Etheridge still will have to face weapons charges in the April 11 incident in which Etheridge's 35-year-old cousin Keith Bender also was killed.

Etheridge's lawyer has said his client fired a gun while trying to defend Bender during the April 11 fight at the CCC, an after-hours club on Detroit's Eight Mile Road. "The evidence clearly shows that Mario Etheridge acted in lawful self-defense of another when he shot Deshaun Holton,"

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said at a news conference, using Proof's legal name. "Once the gunshots started, everything happened fairly quickly." She said Etheridge shot twice at the ceiling to stop Proof, who was a member of D12 and Eminem's best friend, before aiming the gun at him.

A message seeking comment was not returned by Etheridge's lawyer, Randall Upshaw. Bender's survivors filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Proof's estate on May 1. Proof's attorney, David Gorosh, said in a statement released late yesterday that he was gathering evidence in the civil suit that could lead the prosecutor's office to reconsider charges against Etheridge.

Upshaw has maintained that the 32-year-old Proof -- who died with a blood alcohol level of 0.32 percent (four times the level considered drunk under Michigan law) -- became belligerent during a game of pool. The man he argued with stopped to speak to him on his way out, Upshaw said, and Proof then argued with Bender and later returned with a gun, pistol-whipped Bender and shot him in the face.