A Brooklyn teenager who was shot at 16 times by police was unarmed and surrendering when cops opened fire, his lawyers said in a new lawsuit.
Keston Charles was 15 when he was shot three times during a foot chase in December 2013.
At the time police said that Charles pointed a gun at officers in Brownsville and then fled the scene. The weapon, it turns out was a BB gun.
New surveillance footage shows the teen was not armed as police shot at him during the chase, and was surrendering when further shots were fired.
Charles was shot once in the buttocks while fleeing, and then again in the side and chest after he dropped the BB gun and had his hands above his head.
‘I put up my hands, they was still shooting,’ Charles said in a sworn deposition.
The teen was placed in a medically induced coma for three weeks, underwent surgery and later pleaded guilty in Family Court to possessing a fake pistol.
Charles said he ran from police because he was scared for his life.
An internal police investigation found that the officers involved acted appropriately.
Only one of the cops had opened fire and emptied the clip of his pistol.
He was never disciplined over the shooting.
A Manhattan Federal Judge will now decided whether the lawsuit should be put before a jury to decide whether there was excessive force used.
Lawyers for Charles and his family say the video disproves claims that Charles was threatening the officers.
They had claimed Charles was caught pointing a gun – which was a BB gun – at another boy during a dispute in the street when arrived at the scene.
Charles ran when he saw police and was shot at. After being hit in the buttocks, he surrendered outside an apartment building.
Thats where, according to his lawyers, he was shot another two times.
‘The officer’s claim that this young man repeatedly took aim at him with an unloaded toy gun not only defies logic, but it is blatantly contradicted by the video,’ lawyers David Shanies, Phil Smallman and Michael Colihan said in a statement.
The case is being compared to the shooting death of Tamir Rice in Cleveland in November 2014. Two officers were called to a city park amid reports a juvenile was pointing a gun at people.
The boy, 12-year-old Rice, had a toy gun, but was shot in the torso by police within seconds of them arriving. He died in hospital the following day.
In the case of Rice, while the original 911 caller reportedly told dispatch that the person in the park was ‘probably a juvenile’ and that the gun was ‘probably fake,’ this was never relayed to cops who responded to the scene.
Charles was fortunate enough to survive the shooting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=294Ohm4AF9k&ab_channel=Don%27tShoot
