Local mom asks inmate why he killed her son

The documentary airs at 6 p.m. Sunday and again in June.
YOUNGSTOWN -- The National Geographic Channel videotaped an Austintown woman's conversation with the man who killed her son six years ago.
Shirley Burney, 57, of Raccoon Road, said a small portion of her one-hour dialogue with Diedreikus Albert, who was convicted in the death of her son, Albert Lipford, is included in the NGC documentary "Lockdown -- Predators Behind Bars."
The program, according to the NGC Web site, takes the viewer inside Ohio's Lebanon Correctional Institution and follows a new inmate "thrown into the mix of nearly 2,200 of the state's most dangerous and conniving criminals."
The documentary airs at 6 p.m. Sunday and again in June.
Albert, 31, was sentenced to nine years in prison for involuntary manslaughter and robbery, and a gun specification tacked on another three years. He's been incarcerated since February 2001.
The shooting death of Burney's son took place in 2000 in the Columbus area. Lipford, a Fitch High School graduate, was 27 at the time, his mother said.
Burney said it was the first time she saw Albert. When the National Geographic film crew learned her purpose for the visit, they sought permission to record it, and she agreed.
Reason for her visit
"I wanted to know why [Albert] killed my son. I needed to see him to know the circumstances," Burney said. "It was a drug deal that went bad."
Burney said her son wasn't just another drug dealer -- he was an Army veteran who had a life and a family. He wanted money for a flashy lifestyle, she said.
"When kids leave our sight, they make choices on their own. With drugs, it's get killed or go to prison," Burney said. "I can't put it all on Diedreikus, my son knew the consequences. Diedreikus had a part, and my son had a part."
She said Albert was sorry but told her: "This is how it is out there." She said the man who shot her son, originally from California, joined the Crips when he was 12.
"He didn't weep but he got emotional," Burney said of their conversation. "He's a child of God. I couldn't hate him. I wanted to find rage, but I couldn't hate this young man."
Burney said she wasn't raised to hate, and "all Diedreikus did was kill the body not the soul."