From the Chicago Tribune: A 13-year-old California boy carrying a replica of an assault rifle to a friend's house was shot and killed by a sheriff's deputy who believed the gun was real, authorities said.
The incident took place in Santa Rosa, Northern California,
on Tuesday, a day after a 12-year-old boy killed a teacher at a Nevada middle school with a gun he also used to take his own life.
The Santa Rosa boy's father said his son, Andy Lopez Cruz, a middle schooler who played the saxophone and liked basketball and boxing, was shot while on his way to a friend's house with a pellet gun left at the family home over the weekend.
"It's not right what they did to my son," said the father, Rodrigo Lopez, as he sat with friends and family on Wednesday outside Santa Rosa City Hall in a quiet protest.
Lieutenant Paul Henry, who is investigating the incident for the Santa Rosa Police Department, said two Sonoma County Sheriff's deputies had been patrolling a street near the boy's home on Tuesday when they saw him walking with what appeared to be an assault weapon in his left hand.
One of the deputies, who did not immediately realize that the person he was seeing from behind was a child, shouted twice: "Put down the gun," according to Henry and a police statement.
"The subject turned toward the deputies, and as he was doing that the barrel of the weapon was rising toward the deputies," Henry said. The deputy then fired rounds, killing the boy. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-california-shooting-20131023,0,6116805.story
I feel sorry for the family, but there have been too many instances of kids killing other kids and adults including teachers with guns.
Sadly, the kid didn't follow the directions of the cops. Since the kid was Hispanic, maybe his didn't understand the cops and that would be the fault of the parents. Maybe if the parents didn't allow their kid to play with toy guns that looked like real guns, the kid would still be alive.
I don't blame the cops, though I do blame the parents and they need to realize that they helped kill their child.
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Even with a language barrier, I would think if you're holding a gun-shaped thing and the cops confront you, you put it down if you don't want to die. I wonder if the kid had some sort of mental problem, and couldn't process what was going on or something.
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