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Cleveland police say slain youth held air gun ‘indistinguishable from a real gun’

Cleveland, OH — The 12-year-old boy shot by Cleveland police over the weekend was wielding an air gun that is “indistinguishable from a real gun,...
12-year-old with air gun dies in Cleveland police shooting
Cleveland police say slain youth held air gun ‘indistinguishable from a real gun’

Cleveland, OH — The 12-year-old boy shot by Cleveland police over the weekend was wielding an air gun that is “indistinguishable from a real gun,” Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams told reporters Monday.

[Previous story, posted at 10:41 a.m. ET]

Cleveland authorities have surveillance video showing the weekend shooting by police of a 12-year-old boy who was brandishing an ultrarealistic air gun, a department spokesman said Monday.

Tamir Rice died Saturday after a witness called 911 to report someone pointing a weapon — “probably fake” — at people outside a city recreation center.

A police officer responding to the call shot the boy when he pulled the weapon from his waistband, according to police. He later died at a Cleveland hospital.

The video is not currently being released to the public, Sgt. Ali Pillow told CNN.

It's likely to come up, however, at a Monday morning press conference called by police to discuss the investigation into Tamir's death.

The incident comes as the nation nervously awaits a grand jury decision on whether to charge the police officer who killed African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August.

The attorney for the family of the Cleveland youngster, who also was black, downplayed any possible racial connotations to the shooting. Police have not disclosed the race of the officer who shot Tamir.

"This is not a black and white issue. This is a right and wrong issue," attorney Tim Kucharski said.

The incident began when police were summoned to a city recreation center by a 911 caller who said someone -- possibly a juvenile -- was pointing a gun at people.

"There's a guy in there with a pistol, you know, it's probably fake, but he's like pointing it at everybody," the caller said.

"He's sitting on a swing right now, but he's pulling it in and out of his pants and pointing it at people," the caller said. "He's probably a juvenile, you know?"

When the two officers arrived, the boy did not point the weapon at them or otherwise threaten them, Deputy Chief Ed Tomba of the Cleveland Division of Police told reporters early Sunday.

MORE details here.

But he did reach for the weapon, Tomba said.

"The officers ordered him to stop and to show his hands and he went into his waistband and pulled out the weapon," he said.

Tamir died early Sunday at MetroHealth Medical Center following surgery, according to the hospital and the family's attorney.

Tomba showed reporters the weapon the boy was said to be reaching for -- a large, black BB- or pellet-type replica gun resembling a semiautomatic pistol. An orange tip indicating the gun was not a real firearm had been removed, police said.

It wasn't clear if officers had been told the weapon was not a firearm, Pillow told CNN on Sunday.

Both officers have been placed on leave, police said.

The head of the police union said the officers followed protocols.

"As they approached the male, they are screaming at him, 'Put your hands up, put your hands up' -- they don't want his hands to go anywhere down by the waistband," Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association President Jeff Follmer told CNN affiliate WJW.

"I can tell you the officer that fired had no clue that he was 12, he just thought it was an older male. There was more concentration on his hands because we are taught in the academy that hands will kill you," Follmer told the station.

Residents reacted angrily.

"It wasn't a dog. It was a child. You didn't give him a chance. You just killed him," one man told CNN affiliate WEWS.

Someone claiming to represent the online activist group Anonymous claimed in a YouTube video to have taken down the city's website, blaming the shooting on what the speaker said was "an overzealous rookie officer" who resorted too quickly to lethal force.

"Officers are equipped with many nonlethal options such as Taser guns," the speaker said. "Why did he not use a Taser on this child? Shooting him in cold blood was not necessary with these nonlethal options available."

However, Follmer said officers had no way to know the weapon wasn't a real firearm.

"You feel bad, after the fact, that it was a 12-year-old," he said. "Nobody wants to shoot a 12-year-old, especially when they are holding a fake gun. But that's not the perception the officers had at that time."

Police shootings of African-Americans, particularly young men, have been under rising scrutiny in recent months following the shooting of Brown by a white officer following a brief confrontation in Ferguson.

A grand jury there is expected to soon make a decision whether Officer Darren Wilson should face criminal charges in that incident, which resulted in widespread protests over police violence against African-Americans.

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