Police in Columbus, Ohio, were investigating how a 13-year-old boy wanted for questioning Wednesday night in an armed robbery ended up fatally shot by an officer.
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A Columbus police spokesman refused to comment on how Mr Braxton’s account compares with that of the officers’ involved.
Nineteen-year-old Demetrius Braxton tells The Columbus Dispatch he had run away with Tyre and was with him when the shooting occurred.
“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.
The shooting of 13-year-old Tyre King by a white police officer is raising questions about the behavior of the police once again, but details are emerging which appear to back up what police have said about the case.
Police said upon further investigation it was determined that King’s gun was actually a BB gun with an attached laser sight.
Once the police complete their review, it will be passed onto a prosecutor and grand jury, who will determine whether the officers should face criminal charges.
She said the official manner of death is pending, with a final report not expected for several weeks.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission says about four people are killed each year by BB or pellet guns.
Community members aren’t sure why police pursued suspects in what was reported as a $10 robbery. “What is now out there might not be true”.
“That’s unacceptable”, said Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther.
King’s sister was named by the uploader of the videos as Marshay Caldwell.
Dozens attended a vigil Thursday night near the shooting, including members of Tyre King’s youth football team.
People gathered on Thursday near the scene of the shooting, some of them carrying signs calling for justice for Tyre, according to a report by the Associated Press.
The lawyer for Tyre’s family has also called for a fair and independent investigation into the death.
Anyone with information about the shooting is urged to contact police, said Ginther. Police claimed they mistook a toy pistol carried by the child for a real gun.
The child – later identified by Columbus police as Tyre King – had “pulled a gun from his waistband” when officers attempted to take him and another male into custody, the Columbus Division of Police said in a statement. King later died in a hospital.
A black 13-year-old boy has been shot dead by a white police officer after he pulled a replica gun from his waistband. According to CNN, in 2012, Mason responded to a 911 call at a Columbus home and fatally shot an armed man.
The Columbus Dispatch reported that investigators concluded Mason acted within policy in that case.
An internal police probe of the shooting and a separate investigation of the reported robbery are under way. Police say officers followed potential suspects into an alley, and Tyre pulled a weapon from his waistband and was shot.
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“He is, you know, not happy about having to be in that situation, but at the end of the day he had to do what he had to do”, Pappas said. He said the family believed Tyree being involved in an armed robbery would be “out of character”. He played football, and was in his school’s young scholars program, an attorney for his family told the AP.
