A life dangles in the tangle of an off-duty cop's shot

Now Allen is fighting for his life at Albert Einstein Medical Center. The bullet punctured his lung and fractured his spine in nine places. He's paralyzed from the waist down, maybe the chest. He's battling pneumonia and struggling to breathe on his own, according to his family.

"My brother should have never been shot," his sister Lauren Allen said. "Never. It was for nothing - for a pizza he didn't take."

Ellison's son was robbed and punched in the face outside Bruno's Pizza at 19th and Cheltenham Avenue around 9 p.m., according to police, who said the boy had told his dad what happened.

Ellison confronted a 16-year-old known as "Meaty," and Meaty ran, according to Allen's family. Carrying a pizza, Meaty, a friend of Lawrence Allen's, sprinted up Renovo Street near 20th - less than two blocks from Bruno's - to the Allen family home about 9:05.

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