A plainclothes Baltimore police officer shot and wounded a 13-year-old boy carrying a BB-gun replica of a semiautomatic handgun Wednesday as he ran from detectives a year after anti-police rioting swept West Baltimore, officials said.
The teen is expected to survive wounds to his lower extremities, Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said at a news conference.
Two detectives, driving down the street, had spotted the teen walking with what looked like a handgun, Davis said, and so they approached him. “They identified themselves as police officers to this young man, [and] the young man took off on foot with the gun in his hand,” Davis said.
The officers chased the teen for about 150 yards before one of them fired at him in the area of the unit block of Asquith Street, police said.
Davis defended the officers’ actions, remarking on how much the BB gun looks like a Beretta semiautomatic. “I put my own eyes on it. It’s an absolute, identical replica semiautomatic pistol,” Davis said. “Those police officers had no way of knowing that it was not an actual firearm.”
The officers, he said, “engaged a person who they believed had a gun. … That’s what cops do.”
It was not clear why the boy ran from police.
Wednesday’s shooting occurred a year to the day after the funeral for 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who died April 19,2015, of injuries suffered in police custody. The day of the funeral, protests and some acts of violence escalated into unrest that saw businesses burned, widespread looting, clashes with police and citywide curfews.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Clarence Williams
