Wednesday’s fatal shooting by police of a 13-year-old black robbery suspect who allegedly pulled out a BB gun in Columbus, Ohio, will be investigated thoroughly, and the results will be sent to the county prosecutor with the anticipation a grand jury will determine whether charges will be filed, Columbus police Chief Kim Jacobs said Thursday.
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King was pronounced dead 40 minutes after officers were sent to an area near the intersection of South 18th Street and East Capital Street, just south of Broad Street east of downtown Columbus.
Police said they were searching for additional suspects.
According to law enforcement, the officers then encountered three males matching the descriptions of the suspects and attempted to speak with them.
That suspect, later identified as Tyree King, was taken to a children’s hospital, where he died.
The male suspect with King at the time was interviewed and released upon further investigation.
The officer and the other young male with King were not injured.
Police later established that the boy had actually been carrying a BB gun – a type of sporting air gun that is created to shoot pellets – with an attached laser sight.
The shooting is under investigation, the AP reports. “I know that some of the officers at the scene were very disturbed about the fact that here we are out at this time of the night chasing armed 13-year-olds”. A caller reported someone pointing a gun at people near a recreation center, and a rookie officer shot Tamir nearly immediately after his police cruiser stopped nearby.
Tyree King and another male were being apprehended in OH following reports of a group of men, one “brandishing a gun, and demanding money”, in OH on Wednesday evening.
Toy guns or reproductions can often appear indistinguishable from real weapons, and in shootings that involve such fake weapons, officers often say they could not tell the guns were not real. Rich Weiner, spokesman for the Columbus Division of Police. “We are talking about a thirteen year old that made decision”, said Sgt.
Still others, including Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, drew parallels between King’s death and that of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy who was shot and killed by a police officer in Cleveland in November 2014. In that incident, police responded to a report of a person wielding a gun in a public park.
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A grand jury declined to indict the officers involved previous year.
