Authorities in Baltimore, Maryland say a retired officer shot a teen boy in the head during an attempted carjacking, the WBAL TV reported.
Wednesday afternoon, a 73-year-old former Baltimore police officer, who has not been identified, was eating lunch in his vehicle at Carroll Park when he was approached by a group of teenagers.
It was reported that they swung his door open and a 13-year-old boy, whose name has not been released to the public, pointed a fake gun at him.
Believing it was a carjacking, the former officer pulled out his gun and opened fire, shooting the teen in the head – that’s when the rest of the group of teens fled the scene on foot.
When emergency medical services arrived at the scene, they rushed the boy to a local hospital, where he remains in critical condition, according to the teen’s aunt Shantell Damon.
She added that her nephew is in the hospital room with no one at his side, “not his mother, not his father, nobody. They wouldn’t let nobody go back there.”
The teen’s family was out shopping for Christmas gifts when they learned he had been shot in the head during an alleged carjacking after pointing a fake gun at a retired officer.
However, Damon says the teen doesn’t own a fake gun. “No, he doesn’t have possession of stuff like that. If he sees one of his friends have that, yeah, he’s a teenager. He’s going to want to hold it, play with it, but no he doesn’t have possession of stuff like that because his mom doesn’t allow him to have possessions of stuff like that.”
Baltimore Police Det. Donny Moss said: “He put himself in a bad predicament and unfortunately, he paid a heavy price for it. Preliminarily, this looks to be justified. The 73-year-old male did have a valid handgun permit that was issued by the state police of Maryland. And there’s no way he could have told at that instant that the gun that the young man was carrying was not real.”
The Baltimore City Police Chief of Communications, TJ Smith, said: “When referring to this 13-year-old, we need to be reminded that he committed a silly act, and the consequences were substantial.”
“If he gets in the position where we charge him with possessing a replica gun, that’s actually a really good day for him because that means he survived, he’s coherent enough to answer the charges.”
A witness told responding officers that the gun the teen allegedly pointed at the retired officer looked real. And the next thing he saw was the teen laying on the pavement after being shot in the head and the group of teens, which included girls, ran off.
Afterward, the witness stated that the former officer yelled at the teens, saying “Why don’t you come back here and help your friend?”
“None of those kids stopped and called 911. They ran and got out of dodge,” Smith added.
The former officer worked for the department from the 1960s to 1970s and was licensed to care a firearm.
Baltimore police said the “Carroll Park tragedy should serve as a lesson.”
Smith said, “It’s not fair that a child has something like that in his hand, and if you’re a parent who knows that a child has it, or if you’re a friend of a parent who knows that a child possesses something like this, do something about it.”
The shooting comes just weeks after the “Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake signed legislation that banned realistic looking toy guns with a $250 fine and possible jail time in the hopes of getting fake guns off the street.”
The teen remains in critical condition after being shot in the head by a retired Baltimore officer. If his condition improves, police say he will be facing charges.
[Featured Image By Xtremest/iStock]
