“Our objective was mainly to express solidarity with Tyre King and his family, just to show that we won’t stay “calm” as suggested by the Columbus police chief, (and) we won’t trust the police’s account of the event”, Pesala said. Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther previously said the BB gun looks “almost identical” to the 9-millimeter Glock semi-automatic handguns carried by city police.
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Attorneys for the family of Tyre King said on Monday that the local coroner’s office completed its autopsy of the child’s body, but the results wouldn’t be made available for at least six weeks.
The young boy was shot and killed as police responded to a report of an armed robbery on the evening of September 14.
An independent medical examiner found Monday that the Black teenager fatally shot by US police in Columbus, Ohio, was “more likely than not” running away from an officer and not confronting him with “a realistic-looking BB gun” when he was killed, as the police claimed. A Washington Post analysis of 2015 fatal police shootings suggests that while less African-Americans than white Americans were killed in that year by police, if those statistics are adjusted for population, African-Americans were 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police.
Since the official autopsy report won’t be release for at least six weeks, King’s family hired Dr. Francisco Diaz, professor of pathology at the University of MI and medical examiner for Wayne County, to perform an independent autopsy.
Columbus police arrested Braxton on a robbery charge Saturday afternoon near the Ohio State University campus. The investigation is ongoing. When they arrived on the scene, authorities said they saw two teens who matched the description of the robbery suspects with young King. Experts say criminals gravitate toward pellet or BB guns because they can look indistinguishable from the real thing and are cheap and easy to get.
Braxton told the Columbus Dispatch last week he was with King when he was shot. Braxton remained held without bond.
“The cops said to get down”, Braxton told the newspaper.
Columbus police have refused to comment on how Braxton’s recollection compares with police officers’ accounts of the situation.
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Judge Eileen Paley granted his request and set a September 27 hearing.
