Ohio police release body camera video of officer shooting 15-year-old boy who family says had toy gun
Police in Akron, Ohio, have released body camera footage of an officer shooting a 15-year-old boy who was holding what his family says was a toy gun.
Police in Akron, Ohio, released video of an officer shooting a 15-year-old boy who was holding what his family says was a toy gun, video that shows the teenager was struck seconds after the officer ordered him to put his hands up last week.
Tavion Koonce-Williams was shot in the wrist on April 1 in Akron by Officer Ryan Westlake, a nine-year department veteran, who was responding to a call about a person pointing a gun at houses. Akron police said the gun Tavion had been carrying was a “facsimile.”
On Monday, the city of Akron released Westlake’s file, revealing a history of disciplinary actions and use-of-force incidents, as the police department released the video of the interaction “in an effort to be as transparent as possible.”
Shortly after 7 p.m. on April 1, a woman called police claiming she had seen a Black male “pull out a gun” and start pointing it at houses in the area of Tonawanda Avenue and Newton Street, Akron police said in a news release the same day.
Westlake was the responding officer. He found the person, later identified by his family as Tavion, several blocks away in the area of Brittain Road and Ottawa Avenue and fired a single bullet that struck him. Tavion was taken to a hospital with a non-life-threatening injury, police said in their initial release.
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