A 13-year-old African-American boy who was carrying a BB gun was fatally shot Wednesday night by a police officer in Columbus, Ohio.
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Tyre was an eighth-grader at Linden-McKinley STEM Academy, a Columbus city school on the north side, a few miles from where the shooting happened. He said the family believed Tyree being involved in an armed robbery would be “out of character”.
Officers investigating the robbery report east of downtown Columbus spotted three males who matched the description of the suspects, authorities said.
“Officers followed the males to [an] alley. and attempted to take them into custody when one suspect pulled a gun from his waistband”, read the statement first reported by NBC News.
Sirens are heard moments later as police search for the suspects.
Police in the town of Columbus, where the incident took place, said they were investigating Wednesday’s killing of Tyre King, the latest in a string of shootings of African Americans by law enforcement that have fueled protests and national debate about policing tactics in U.S. cities.
At a news conference, Police Chief Kim Jacobs displayed a photo of a BB gun like the one Tyre had. She said the officer’s future with the department beyond the period of leave depends on the investigation.
“By the end of the year, we plan on purchasing body cameras for all of our officers, and they will be wearing them when they are on duty”, Stone told The Lantern in an interview Thursday afternoon about the upcoming Community Police Academy that University Police is hosting.
Neighborhood resident Chris Naderer told The Columbus Dispatch he was home at the time and heard someone knock down a gate in his backyard, then saw an officer chasing two young men into the alley and heard several gunshots.
“Their proliferation in public is unsafe for the same reasons traditional firearms are, but also for an additional reason: they endanger kids who carry them in instances where someone (like a police officer) mistakes it for a different type of weapon”, Shearer said. “I was in the situation”, he said.
“It turns out to not be a firearm in the sense that it fires real bullet, but as you can see it looks like a firearm that could kill you”, Jacobs said.
While the case is still under investigation, police and city authorities rejected comparisons to the 2014 killing of 12-year-old Tamir in Cleveland. Relatively little information was available Thursday beyond the initial account provided by authorities, who said that they were gathering details.
“We robbed somebody, the people I was with”, Braxton said, according to the Dispatch.
“Our officers carry a gun that looks practically identical to this weapon”, she said.
“Tyre was a child who was loved and cherished by his family”, attorney Chanda L. Brown said. Thirteen people have been shot by police in Columbus; five have died.
The family said in its statement that King was a boy who liked what a lot of teenagers liked. “We got down but my friend (King) got up and ran”, Braxton said.
FATAL POLICE-INVOLVED SHOOTING:This is a replica of the 13yo suspects gun used in last night’s armed robbery. Police say Tyre was shot in a confrontation in a Columbus alley after running from officers investigating a reported armed robbery.
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According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 23 states and the District of Columbia regulate non-powder guns and 11 of them place age restrictions.
