Tyre King shooting: 13-year-old remembered in vigil

Friends and family members gathered for a vigil for the 13-year-old who was shot by a police officer, after the boy allegedly pulled out a BB gun, according to authorities.

On Thursday evening, community members including King's youth football teammates gathered in the Columbus neighborhood near the spot where Tyre King was shot the day before.

"He's really not coming back," said King's sister, Marshay Caldwell, who held back tears. "He didn't deserve to die," she told the people who attended the vigil, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

King, who is black, died at a hospital after an officer, who is white, shot him several times Wednesday evening outside a house in east-central Columbus, police said.

City leaders in Ohio's capital said the shooting would be investigated to determine whether the officer's gunfire was justified.

Columbus police Chief Kim Jacobs holds up a picture of what she says is a BB gun like Tyree King's.

King, an eighth-grader, had a BB gun that "looks practically identical" to the type of handgun that Columbus police carry, Chief Kim Jacobs said Thursday.

"This is the last thing that a police officer wants to do in their career. Unfortunately ... it becomes necessary at times to defend themselves," Jacobs told reporters.

The officer who shot King, Bryan Mason, a nine-year veteran of the force, will be placed on leave for at least a week during an investigation, Jacobs said.

Family's victim disputes police narrative

Attorneys who represent the teen's family released a statement saying what police described is "out of his normal character."

Lawyer Sean Walton said there are witnesses who do not corroborate what authorities say happened.

Tyre King

"There are allegations that have been made regarding his actions, and those allegations cannot be taken as factual until a thorough, unbiased investigation has taken place," he added.

The family said in a statement that King was a boy who liked what a lot of teenagers liked. He played football, hockey and soccer and did gymnastics

"Tyre was a child who was loved and cherished by his family," attorney Chanda L. Brown said.

Events before the shooting

The shooting happened after a man told police that a group had pulled a gun on him and stole an unspecified amount of money, police said.

Officers eventually saw three people matching the alleged robbers' descriptions, and two of them -- including King -- ran, police said. When officers caught up to them and tried to arrest them in an alley, King pulled what appeared to be a handgun from his waistband, and Mason shot him, police said.

The weapon turned out to be a BB gun with a laser sight attachment designed to help a shooter's aim, according to police.

At Thursday's news conference, Jacobs held a picture of an example of the type of BB gun she said was involved.

The gun "turns out not to be a firearm in the sense that it fires real bullets, but ... it looks like a firearm that can kill you."

Investigators didn't yet know whether the BB gun had been fired, said Sgt. Rich Weiner, police spokesman.

The officer involved in King's shooting, had shot and killed someone while on duty before. In 2012, while responding to a 911 call at a Columbus home, Mason fatally shot an armed man, said Weiner.

The officer's actions were found to be within policy, so Mason was not disciplined, he said. The police department gave Mason an award for bravery in 2010.

Two years after Tamir Rice's shooting

The Columbus police chief dismissed parallels made between King's death and that of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy who was shot and killed by a police officer in Cleveland in November 2014.

"We don't have enough facts to know anything about how this relates to any other shooting, including Tamir Rice's," Jacobs said.

Rice had been drawing an airsoft gun from his waist when Officer Timothy Loehmann, who is white, fired the fatal shots within two seconds of arriving outside a recreation center where the sixth-grader was, a prosecutor said. The boy died a day later.

Loehmann, who'd been called there after a 911 caller reported seeing someone with a pistol that might have been fake, said he thought the boy appeared older and had a real gun. Police said the orange tip that distinguishes air pistols from real ones had been removed from the gun.

A grand jury in 2015 chose not to indict the two responding police officers. Cleveland later settled with Rice's family for $6 million.

Neither Ohio nor the city of Columbus restrict possession of guns like BB guns -- which use air instead of gunpowder to project ammunition -- by age.