Police in Columbus, Ohio were called to the scene of an armed robbery Wednesday night, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
Advertisement
Officers located three males, including King, matching the description of the suspects a short time later, police said. They spoke to the victim of an armed robbery, who described a group who had approached him and demanded money after showing him a gun.
“I will not let an officer out on the street to perform their job if I do not trust them”, she said.
Two of the men ran away, but officers followed them to a nearby alley.
Tyree King, 13, was shot multiple times in an alley east of downtown when he pulled what appeared to be a handgun from his waistband during a confrontation with police on Wednesday, police said.
This year, that list has included Kionte Desean Spencer, an 18-year-old who was shot by Roanoke County, Virginia, police officers while holding a broken BB gun that officers say looked real, and Robert Dentmond, a 16-year-old in Gainesville, Florida, holding a toy gun that resembled an assault rifle.
It’s almost two years after Tamir Rice, 12, was shot and killed by police in Cleveland, a two-hour drive from Columbus.
Walton says the family believes Tyree being involved in an armed robbery would be “so out of character” for him.
Police say that the male suspect who was with King was questioned and released, adding that the investigation is continuing. “We’re talking about a 13-year-old that made a decision”, Columbus police spokesman Sgt.
“A 13-year-old is dead in the city of Columbus because of our obsession with guns”. Walton says the eighth-grader played football and was in the young scholars program at school. Others are being sought, police said.
According to police, the officer who fired the shots is a nine-year veteran of the force.
There was no chase in Tamir’s case.
Tyree died at a children’s hospital. A rookie officer shot Tamir nearly immediately after his police cruiser stopped nearby.
Advertisement
Police said the incident is under investigation. The caller had said the person was likely a juvenile and the weapon was probably fake, but the call taker never passed that information to the dispatcher of the responding officers. He said Tamir was trying to either hand the weapon over to police or show them it wasn’t real, but the patrolmen had no way of knowing that.
