A 13-year-old was shot and killed by a police officer in Utica after a foot chase Friday night. The bodycam video of the shocking incident has now been released. Nyah Mway, a Burmese refugee, was one of the two juveniles stopped by the Utica Police Department’s crime prevention unit at 10.18 pm Friday. As they were stopped, the 13-year-old ran and displayed a pellet gun, the police said.Then he was fatally shot by the police.
“Can I just pat you down to make sure you’ve got no weapons on you?” officer Bryce Patterson asked Mway, as seen in the bodycam footage. Mway spoke to him in English and raised his hands before quickly running off making three police officers chase him. Then Mway pulled out what appeared to be a pellet gun and pointed it directly at the officers.
Patterson tackled Mway to the ground and another officer fired a single shot. Mway was later taken to the hospital where he died. The New York State Attorney General’s office is investigating whether the shooting was justified.
After the shooting, the weapon Mway flashed was determined to be a replica Glock and a pellet gun.
The police said they were looking for teens, suspects in recent armed robberies who were described as “Asian males who brandished a black in color firearm and forcibly demanded and stole property from victims”. In one of the robberies, one of the suspects was walking while the other was on a bicycle like Mway and his friend as seen by the cops.
All the three officers have been placed on administrative leave.
The killing triggered an intense standoff between the police officers and the 100 community members at the police station. Some reports claimed Nyah who just completed his 8th grade was walking home from Bible study when cops killed him.