Toy Gun Gets Boy Killed

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A thirteen year old boy, Andy Lopez Cruz, was shot and killed, not too far from home, after police thought he possessed a real AK-47 rifle. According to the SF Gate, the deputies spotted the boy walking and shouted at him to put the gun down. When the boy turned around, still holding the fake rifle, they fired shots and the boy died almost instantly.

Friends, family, and neighbors mourn for the boy, wondering if perhaps the cops were trigger happy officers. Toy guns are required by law to be tipped with orange or be transparent. The plastic pellet shooting rifle had no such orange coloring. A smaller, transparent gun was also found on the boy, hidden in the waistband of his pants. The deputy officers are currently on paid leave. One of them revealed that the tip of the gun was raised upward as the boy turned to them and they took it as an aggressive act. They hid behind the squad car’s doors, fearful for their own safety and the safety of everyone else in the area when one of them fired the fatal shots. The number of shots fired and the number of times Andy was hit is unknown at this time.

  

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Witnesses heard the deputies tell Andy to put down the gun twice. Sheriff Steve Freitas is a father of two boys about Andy’s age and sympathizes with the boy’s parents. “This is a tragedy on so many levels,” he said in his statement on Wednesday. “My hope is that we can work with the community to help prevent a similar tragedy from happening in the future.”

Both schools that Andy attended have been mourning his loss and paying tribute with candles, flowers, stuffed animals and a fake rifle tied with a red satin ribbon. The boy was described as being “kind, intelligent, and capable.” He also liked to play the trumpet and basketball, and the toy gun that ultimately got him killed didn’t even belong to him. Many people are questioning why the boy had to be killed when the deputies should have shot him in the arm or leg. They argue that he was just a young, adolescent boy and the officers should have realized that important detail. Friends and family believe Andy Cruz wasn’t given a chance to put the toy gun down.

Criminologist, Geoffrey Alpert reasoned, “As long as an armed person appears to be a threat, you don’t have time to look to see if it’s a toy. If it looks real, you’ve got to believe it’s real. A perceived threat trumps age; it trumps mental abilities.”