HERNANDO, Miss. — Details of a deadly shooting by FBI agents of a man at a Mississippi motel remain a mystery — but now a person who claims to be a family member of the victim is speaking.

You may remember the shooting Oct. 4 at a Super 8 Motel just off Interstate 55 in Hernando. We know the FBI shot and killed a man, but we never officially heard why.

We would later learn that FBI agents had their eyes on a suspect, who was located at the hotel and shot and killed in the parking lot.

Weeks later, a woman who says she is a family member reached out to WREG in her search for answers.

She identified him as 50-year-old Ilya Beloozerov, originally from Russia. She says how he died was a case of overkill.

The woman sent WREG graphic pictures of his disfigured and swollen body, taken days after she says he was shot some 40 times in his chest, shoulder, abdomen, feet and neck.

She called the shooting horrific, but she says she was never told why he was killed.

The woman says five days before Beloozerov’s death, family members got a call from the FBI with questions about whether he was being lured to help Ukraine.

The family said one thing they knew for sure was that Beloozerov would never back Russia.  

They say he loved the U.S.A. and had been here since 1987, working as an IT specialist and federal government contractor.

The next time they heard from authorities, he was dead.

The family admits he had his faults, but they say he didn’t deserve to be shot 40 times.

Now they want to know why the family is being kept in the dark about what happened that day, saying they sought info through public information requests and have called the FBI, but there’s been no information.

WREG reached out to the FBI office in Jackson, Mississippi, asking for the latest on the case, an ID on the man killed and why he was confronted in the first place.

The office said the investigation is ongoing so they will refrain from commenting.

Shortly after the shooting, the FBI did put out a statement saying, “The FBI takes all shooting incidents involving our agents or task force members seriously. In accordance with the FBI policy, the shooting incident is under review by the FBI’s Inspection Division.”

“It’s a big job to try to corral this, you know, foreign intelligence activity,” said Todd Hulsey, a former FBI agent.

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Hulsey is retired from the FBI and was not involved in the Hernando shooting, but he says he worked in counter-intelligence for years, protecting the country against foreign threats. He says the threat is real, and it is happening in communities where you might least expect it.

“It’s better to hide in plain sight in a small town somewhere than in a big city, or where there’s a diplomatic establishment or more resources pressed against, you know, foreign intelligence operations,” he said. “So it’s possible, you know, that it could have been, a person could be associated with Russian intelligence operations in some way. Just because it’s a small town really, to me, doesn’t mean anything.”

He doesn’t know what happened in the Hernando shooting. But he says it’s rare for a foreign intelligence agent to be killed.

“An actual shootout would be unusual if the person was associated within the foreign intelligence agency, unless the person was otherwise engaged in criminal activity,” Hulsey said. “But I will add, you can’t tell what any individual human beings gonna do at any moment in time, either.”

He says it’s more likely the FBI wants to get information from the spies, or turn them.

“The ultimate goal is to recruit the individuals,” he said, “to recruit the individual actors, to be a confidential human asset of the United States, to turn them back against whichever nation they’re working for. That’s the number one goal.”

He says the other goal is to get info about the foreign country and to stop any counter activity by that country.

He says if the FBI is tracking someone, it’s for a reason.

“There has to be information that is developed by the FBI, or another agency, which indicates that a person or an organization is going to have to be looked at,” Hulsey said. “To determine, who’s this person? What are they doing? Do they have access to anything that may be of use to a foreign nation?”

Back at the Super 8 Motel, workers say the person who checked into their hotel was not the man who was shot.

They told us a man and wife checked into the room. They didn’t remember ever seeing the man who was shot.

That man and wife also contacted WREG shortly after the shooting, saying they met the man, who they called Eli, at a West Memphis, Arkansas McDonald’s.

He was trying to get to California and paid them $3,000 to drive him. They say he promised them $10,000 in total for the ride.

The three had been searching to buy a truck, so they spent the night at the Super 8 motel, and Eli stayed in the room with them. They say Eli had laptops and thousands in cash inside a bag.

The couple says the FBI later told them they saw the couple meet the man in West Memphis and had been watching him for a while.

WREG asked Super 8 if their surveillance video captured the shooting, but they say it all happened on the side of the hotel where cameras were obstructed.

WREG reached out to Hernando Police about any role they played in the FBI incident, and if there is body cam video of the what happened.

They sent us a statement saying, “they assisted in securing the scene and their officers followed policy and utilized Body Worn Cameras.  They said those videos are classified evidence and were surrendered to agents.”

Hernando Police went on to say they aren’t at liberty to discuss the details and directed questions to the FBI Jackson Field Office.

But Ilya Beloozerov’s family says someone needs to explain his death. They say with some 20 officers surrounding him, he should have been given a chance to surrender.

We asked the family member if the man shot by the FBI had weapons that day. They said they weren’t sure, but said he did own guns years ago.

The family is seeking legal counsel on what to do next.

After we started asking questions, the family said they finally heard from the FBI. They are supposed to meet with a representative Friday.