Tyre King, 13, Slain By Police For Carrying BB Gun

A police officer in Columbus, Ohio shot and killed 13-year old Tyre King during an armed robbery investigation on Wednesday.

On Wednesday evening, a Columbus man called 911 and reported that seven or eight assailants had robbed him, taking $10 and that at least one assailant had a pistol. He reported no injuries or need for medical attention.

Officer Bryan Mason was investigating the robbery when he spotted three young black men, including Tyre King, who matched the suspect descriptions a block away from the scene. When he approached, two members of the group ran into an alley.

“Officers followed the males to the alley… and attempted to take them into custody when one suspect pulled a gun from his waistband,” Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs said in a press conference Thursday morning. “(Mason) shot and struck the suspect multiple times.”

Tyre King was pronounced dead at Nationwide Children’s Hospital later that night.

The eighth-grader, Tyre King, allegedly drew his BB gun from his waistband when officers approached him in the alley, which Jacobs said officers mistook for a real gun.

“Our officers carry a gun that looks practically identical to this weapon. It turns out not to be a firearm … that fires real bullets, but as you can see, it looks like a firearm that can kill you,” she said.

Mason, a white officer and a nine-year veteran, has been placed on administrative leave for a week following the incident.

The shooting has garnered immediate national attention in light of the Black Lives Matter movement, which in recent years has drawn public attention to cases of police officers unjustly slaying black citizens without punishment.

The case bears a remarkable similarity to the Cleveland, Ohio shooting of 12-year old Tamir Rice. Rice was shot and killed by police on a playground in 2014 mere moments after the officers arrived, allegedly for carrying a toy gun that police mistook for a weapon. The 12-year-old’s death sparked a national outcry, and Rice became one of the major faces of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“We don’t have enough facts to know anything how this relates to any other shooting, including Tamir Rice’s,” Jacobs said during the press conference. “That’s why we do an investigation.”

King’s family is seeking an independent investigation into the shooting.

“The Columbus Police Department has a history of investigating itself following these officer-involved shootings and we believe that these investigations are inherently biased,” said attorney Chanda Brown, part of the Walton and Brown law firm representing the King family.

“The best thing that the City of Columbus could do to ease the minds and fears of its citizens is to step aside and let an independent party investigate the matter,” she added.

Sean Walton, one of the attorneys of Walton and Brown, said that Tyre had no violent history and was in the young scholar’s program at school. Walton added that King’s family described an armed robbery as “so out of character” for the young boy.

According to the law firm, multiple witnesses contradict the police statement of the incident.

Demetrius Braxton, one of the young men present that night, said that the group he was with had robbed someone and that when police approached him and his friends, Tyre took off.

“We robbed somebody, the people I was with,” Braxton said to the Columbus Dispatch. “(King) started to run” when officers approached the group, Braxton said. “When he ran, the cops shot him … I didn’t think a cop would shoot. Why didn’t they tase him?”

Much of the Black Lives Matter movement has focused on police tendency to turn automatically to deadly force when dealing with black suspects, rather than use de-escalation or makes attempts to avoid gunfire.

Detectives are currently seeking footage of the night’s events involving Tyre King. Although the Columbus police department recently received 30 body cameras, no officers present were wearing one the night of the shooting.

[Featured Image by Jay LaPrete/AP Images]

Tyre King, 13, Slain By Police For Carrying BB Gun is an article from: The Inquisitr News