COLUMBUS (AP) — The fatal police shooting of a 13-year-old Columbus boy who officers said pulled a BB gun from his waistband that looked like a real weapon will be investigated thoroughly to determine if charges are warranted.
NOTE: The spelling of the suspect/victim in this edition of this story has been corrected
Police say Tyre King died at Nationwide Children’s hospital shortly after the shooting, which started with a 911 call about an armed robbery on E. Broad Street in the Old Towne East area.
Police say the officers saw three males matching the descriptions of the suspects and tried to speak with them, when two of them ran off. The officers followed them into an alley when police say a suspect, later identified as Tyre, pulled a gun (replica pictured above) from his waistband, and an officer shot him several times.
Holding a photocopy of a similar gun, police chief Kim Jacobs said the BB gun looks a great deal like Columbus officers’ Smith & Wesson service sidearms.
“Our officers carry a gun that looks practically identical to this weapon,” she told reporters at a news conference on the steps of city hall Thursday morning.
It’s unclear whether the teen pointed what turned out to be a BB gun at anyone or even raised it, according to a report in The Columbus Dispatch.
“We ought to be shocked and angry as a community,” said Ginther, who became emotional during a press conference at City Hall on Thursday morning. “In the safest big city in America, we have a 13-year-old dead in our city. That is unacceptable.”
Ginther, Jacobs and other leaders called for patience in calm in the wake of the incident.
“As this incident is fully investigated, we must stand together—elected officials, parents, activists, police, community and faith leaders, and all of us—to save lives,” said U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Columbus) in a statement.
King, an 8th grader at Linden-McKinley STEM Academy, was shot Officer Bryan Mason, a nine-year veteran of the force who has shot and killed in the line of duty before, according to the newspaper.
Mason has been placed on administrative leave during the investigation by a police team. Evidence from will automatically be presented to a grand jury.
“There is inherent bias in the police investigating themselves and we have an issue with this being a 13-year-old child,” King family attorney Sean Walton said.
“We want to have all the right answers, not quick answers,” Jacobs said.
King, who lived with his grandmother near the Brittany Hills neighborhood, was with several teens in the area of S. 18th Avenue and Capital Street Wednesday night near Downtown.
At 7:42 p.m., police responded to a 911 call that a man who lived near Franklin Park had been robbed of $10 by armed teens who fled in a black car. He described one of them as carrying a Ruger pistol.
“I’m not going to mess with it over $10,” the victim told a 911 dispatcher.
A woman who called 911 on behalf of the robbery victim took the phone back and said there were seven or eight suspects. She can be heard pointing out suspects to officers who had arrived on the scene. Then, a minute or so later, she screams, “Oh! He’s shooting them! Oh my God! They’re shooting! Oh my God!”
Jacobs says this is the 13th officer-involved shooting of 2016. Five of those incidents resulted in fatalities and one ended in the death of an on-duty officer, Steven Smith.