The officers approached the group and Tyree and one of his companions fled, police said.
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This morning, Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs gave the officer’s name, adding “Officers at the scene were very disturbed about the fact that here we are at the this time of the night chasing armed 13-year-olds”. “This is the last thing that a police officer wants to do in their career”.
The head of the local police union that represents Mason didn’t immediately respond to a message Thursday.
Update, Sept. 15, 2016, 4:58 p.m.: One of the friends King was with when he was approached by officers, 19-year-old Demetrius Braxton, has been interviewed by the Columbus Dispatch, and has confirmed that he and King had robbed someone.
Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein took to Twitter to oppose the shooting of another black child by police in Ohio. A member of the group “had a gun on [the victim]”, and the others were “standing behind him holding their hands, too, like they had guns on them”, the witness said.
It comes almost two years after 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot dead by a police officer in Cleveland, Ohio, while holding a pellet gun.
“It’s a weapon – it was used in a robbery”, Columbus police spokesman Sgt.
Investigators are also searching surveillance footage, but it does not appear that the officers were wearing body cameras.
The episode unfolded when police responded to report of an armed robbery on Wednesday night.
Officers responded to a report of an armed robbery of $10 in Columbus when they saw three male suspects matching descriptions given by the victim.
Two of the men ran away, but officers followed them to a nearby alley. 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. Tyre later died at a hospital.
Officials in Columbus, Ohio, are promising a thorough investigation into Wednesday’s shooting death of a 13-year-old African-American by a white policeman. Mason, who has been involved in several shootings during his nine years on the force where he’s been cleared of wrongdoing, is now on administrative leave. Police say Tyre was shot in a confrontation in a Columbus alley after running from officers investigating a reported armed robbery.
In 2012, Mason was involved in another fatal shooting. He said this should be a “call to action” for the community to help keep neighborhoods safe. ” Columbus police released a sketch of what King’s BB gun looked like, pointing out similarities between it and a real handgun”. He questioned why a teen would have what he described as a replica of a police firearm. Ginther said. “An eighth-grader, involved in very, very unsafe conduct, in one of our neighborhoods”. The weapon King allegedly brandished turned out to be a BB gun. He will see a psychologist before returning to work, she said.
The gun “turns out not to be a firearm in the sense that it fires real bullets, but … it looks like a firearm that can kill you”.
“One officer shot and struck the suspect multiple times”. They said he had a slight build and, if anything, was on the small side for his age.
According to police there is no known video footage of the shooting at this time.
The other male who was with King at the time of the shooting was not harmed, and after questioning, the police released him pending further inquiries. Additional suspects were being sought, police said.
Family attorney Chanda Brown took issue with the Columbus PD investigating the shooting itself. The police force was sharply criticized for the death.
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In a statement, Mayor Andrew Ginther characterized the tragedy as a matter of gun control, not police training or protocol.
