A father's left in the dark over son's death

Days after Anaheim police shot and killed his son, he has a father's questions. Would his often troubled 43-year-old son pull a gun and fire first on police before being shot? Is there a way to prove that? What happened during the 12-minute period between the first radio report police made after his son was stopped about 12:15 a.m. Thursday and the second one indicating that shots had been fired? And, in what is in some ways the most vexing question of all, why won't anyone in authority return his phone calls?

"I'm feeling stonewalled," 71-year-old Alan Koenigsberg says Monday morning. "I find it hard to accept that as a father, I can't at least get a courtesy call back from any of the investigators."

He says he's left calls with the Anaheim police, the Orange County district attorney and the coroner. All he wants, Koenigsberg says, is to know exactly what led to his son Barry's death.

"I don't know that we'll ever find out who shot first," Koenigsberg says. "I want to know, did Barry actually shoot a gun himself? I understand that if my son were so foolish as to open fire on police, they would shoot him down. I understand. I'm a cop's son. I understand the cop's side of it. I'm trying to understand my son's side of it. I'm getting no cooperation whatsoever."

The coroner's office will conduct gunshot residue tests to determine if Barry Koenigsberg fired a gun, an Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman says. The test wouldn't determine if he fired first.

Koenigsberg's death comes with a cruel irony. His grandfather -- Alan's father -- was the inspector of police for the Bayonne, N.J., Police Department, ranking right below the chief and assistant chief. Alan and Barry's mother divorced 39 years ago, when Barry was 4, and father and son weren't close through the years.

However, Barry idolized his grandfather, Koenigsberg says, adding that his son's fondest wish was to be a cop. He got only as far as private security work.

One of the legacies from grandfather to grandson was that Barry often wore his grandfather's police belt, on which cops carry their tools of the trade, Koenigsberg says. Anaheim police said Barry was wearing such a belt when shot last week, but haven't said what, if anything, was on it.