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The family of a 13-year-old Myanmar boy is demanding answers after the boy was shot and killed by police in Utica, N.Y.
According to AP, Nyah Mway was fatally shot by a Utica police officer who allegedly believed the boy had a gun, which turned out to be a BB gun. The boy’s family, who moved to the U.S. over a decade ago as refugees from Myanmar, are now calling for justice and accountability for the young boy’s death.
According to police, Nyah and another 13-year-old were stopped by officers who claimed they fit the descriptions of suspects in an armed robbery and that one of the teens was jaywalking.
Body camera footage of the incident shows an officer saying the boys needed to be patted down for weapons. At that moment, Nyah runs away, turns to the officers and seems to point an object at them.
Officers alleged the item in Nyah’s hand was a handgun, but later determined it was a BB gun that resembled a Glock 17.
After Nyah ran away, officer Bryce Patterson caught up with the boy, tackling, punching and wrestling him to the ground. Officer Patrick Husnay then opened fire, shooting Nyah Mway in the chest, according to Utica Police Chief Mark Williams.
The officers involved have been placed on administrative leave and an investigation is ongoing.
Chief Williams said the shooting was “a tragic and traumatic incident for all involved, and his department said it released information and the body camera video in keeping with “our commitment to transparency.”
But the family is singing a different tune, saying the police narrative is “trying to criminalize him a lot more and trying to protect the police officers.”
The escalation of this should not have happened, and our police officers need to be trained a lot better or a lot differently,” Nyah’s cousin, Isabella Moo told AP during a phone interview. “The city needs to be held accountable, and this should not have been done to any child.”
According to The Center, a nonprofit group that helps refugees resettle, Utica is home to thousands of refugees from Myanmar. Nyah’s family fled Myanmar two decades ago and headed to Thailand, where Nyah was born in a refugee camp. The family immigrated to the United States about nine years ago through a resettlement program, according to Nyah’s cousin Lay Htoo.
“We came to the United States, finally, to get the education and to get the good jobs here” and hoping for a peaceful life after decades of strife and violence in Myanmar, Lay Htoo told AP.
Now, instead of the peaceful life they hoped for, they must wade through the pain of losing a child at the hands of U.S. police officers.
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