Police shoots teen holding a replica toy gun

A 13-year-old boy was shot and wounded by a Baltimore police officer Wednesday afternoon while holding what Police Commissioner Kevin Davis described as a “replica gun.” The boy was being treated for wounds that Davis said were non-life threatening. The teen was shot around 4 p.m. after two plainclothes intelligence officers in an unmarked car observed the boy with what appeared to be a gun, Davis said. The officers identified themselves as police, but the boy fled. Both officers pursued the boy on foot, police said. At some point during the chase, one of the officers fired on the boy, wounding him, Davis said. He wouldn’t say whether the teen was pointing the gun or menacing the officers.
Davis said the officers had no way of knowing that the boy was not carrying a real firearm, and he had “no reason to believe” the officers acted inappropriately. Davis said multiple times during an afternoon news conference that the replica gun looked real. He said he looked at it himself and it was a “dead-on ringer” for a semi-automatic Beretta pistol. The boy’s mother was taken in for questioning, Davis said. “She knew” her son had left home with the replica gun, he said. He added that she described the replica gun as a “BB gun” to police.
The shooting took place on the one-year anniversary of the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man whose death in police custody sparked outrage around the nation and unrest in Baltimore. Six officers have been charged in Gray’s fatal injury. Earlier this week, the city of Cleveland, Ohio, reached a $6 million settlement with the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was shot to death by police in 2014. Rice was carrying a toy gun.