Ohio Cop In Hot Water After Shooting A 15-Year-Old Holding A Toy

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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.

Police said they recovered what appeared to be “a facsimile firearm that the teen allegedly had in his possession in the moments leading up to the shooting.”

Imokhai Okolo, an attorney for Tavion’s family, said in a statement Monday that Tavion had a toy gun.

“Tavion is heard multiple times saying: ‘It’s a fake … I just wanted to be safe,’” Okolo said in a statement Monday, adding that “at no point was that toy gun pointed at anyone’s home, at any individual, and certainly not any member of the Akron Police Department.”