Back in March, Oklahoma City Police Sgt. Kyle Holcomb fired four shots at 14-year-old Lorenzo Clerkley, with two of them striking the teen. Lorenzo thankfully survived the shooting. Holcomb was put on administrative leave following the shooting, according to CNN, but has since been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing and has returned to full active duty. However, Lorenzo’s mother—who is not at all satisfied with how quickly Holcomb was cleared—still has questions that she needs answered. “Everything happened so quick,” Cherelle Lee told CNN. “There was no reason he should’ve fired off anyway just because he could’ve ended up taking his life.” Lorenzo and five of his friends decided to go shoot BB guns on March 10 when rain changed their original plans to play basketball. The teens, who had five BB guns among them, decided to go to a long-abandoned home in the area, where they started shooting mirrors and other objects inside the building. Lorenzo was playing with a gun that did not have anything in it, just shooting air. He said he eventually put down the toy to explore the backyard. Around the same time, police, including Holcomb, were responding to a 911 call about several people, two of them armed, breaking into a home. When Holcomb shot Lorenzo, police claimed that he had a toy gun on him and did not drop it when ordered. Body camera footage doesn’t help in this incident, as it is not clear if he was holding the BB gun. However, though the teen acknowledges that he and his friends were playing with the BB guns, he insists he did not have one in his hand when he was shot. More importantly, according to Lorenzo, he wasn’t given time to respond to any orders that were issued to him. Body camera footage shows Holcomb screaming, “Show me your hands! Drop it!” at Lorenzo before quickly firing off four shots within seconds of those words exiting his mouth. “By the time, I went out the window, I heard a voice say, ‘Freeze!’ and I jumped and looked to the right of me, and then he didn’t even give me no time to do anything — put my hands in the air, anything — and he just fired,” Lorenzo told CNN. Loading the player... “I just feel like officers, when it comes to Black kids, they treat them different than white kids, and it’s hard,” he added. “I feel like I’m not even protected by the cops no more. I feel like they’re against me now.” Lee said that even if her son did have a BB gun in his hand, officers should have given him a chance to comply. “You still have a protocol to sit there and ask him and command him to do what you need him to do, and once he’s not following that first command, then you take action on what you need to do from there,” the mother said. “It traumatizes me, myself, to understand that: Hey, you were this close from taking my baby’s life — for nothing.” The family’s attorney points out that Holcomb is heard on camera acknowledging that he thinks the weapon he heard being fired could be a “cap gun,” but still decided to shoot at the teen anyway. “That officer heard what was being fired, acknowledged that it was a toy gun and still fired shots anyway,” Dan Smolen, who is representing Lee and Lorenzo told CNN. “We know what his thoughts were just seconds before the shooting took place.” Meanwhile, Holcomb’s attorney Curt Dewberry, as well as the president of the Oklahoma City Fraternal Order of Police, have called the shooting justified. “I have not seen any information that shows anything other than the fact that the suspect was armed at the time he was fleeing the house after the police announced their presence,” Dewberry said. “In this case, this was a replica-type handgun that looks identical to a duty weapon,” John George, the president of the police union added. “It’s incredibly accurate, so our officer couldn’t tell the difference.” “If somebody’s pointing a gun at you, you don’t even have to give the command. Your life’s in danger at that point. … At that moment in time, it’s justifiable,” George said. Nonetheless, Lorenzo says that had he been given a chance, he would have listened to orders. He told CNN that if he could talk to Holcomb he would want to let him know “that I’m actually a good kid, that I follow directions and stuff like that. He just didn’t give me time to follow his directions.”<doc-sep>Body camera footage from an police officer shows him shooting a 14-year-old boy moments after telling his dispatch that he believed the boy was unarmed. “I think it’s a cap gun,” Sergeant Kyle Holcomb says in a video released by victim Lorenzo Clerkley Jr’s lawyer on Tuesday, “but they are shooting something off.” Lorenzo was shot twice, once in the hip and once in the leg, by the officer on March 10 in Oklahoma City after Sgt Holcomb responded to a call regarding an abandoned house. Lorenzo and friends were at the home shooting airsoft guns. When Sgt Holcomb approached the house, peering through a hole in the home’s fence, he shot at Lorenzo seconds after giving a warning. Lorenzo has since recovered enough to return to school, but must treat his exit wounds daily. Sgt Holcomb maintained after shooting the boy that he believed Lorenzo was armed. After Oklahoma County District Attorney David W Prate declined to press charges, Sgt Holcomb returned to work at the Oklahoma City Police Department following a paid leave. After witnessing the body-camera footage, Lorenzo’s family believes the shooting was unjustified, and is now preparing to file a lawsuit. In the video, Sgt Holcomb approaches the house and tells his dispatch that the thinks the guns are “cap guns.” He then approaches the backyard of the house, gives a warning for the unknown person to “drop your weapon,” and, less than second later, fires four shots. Later, the video shows the officer standing over Lorenzo, who is lying face-down on the ground in handcuffs. Sgt Holcomb raises Lorenzo’s shirt to inspect his wound and tells the boy “you’re okay.” He does not appear to respond to Lorenzo’s follow-up question: “was it a bullet?” In a conversation in which another officer asks Sgt Holcomb if he was okay, he responds “yeah,” and tells his partner he doesn’t want to move the boy while they wait for emergency medical services because the bullet’s “in his hip.” His partner keeps an automatic weapon pointed at the boy as the boy starts to cry. “Are you hurt anywhere else other than your hip?” the officer asks. Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Black Lives Matter protesters march through the streets as they demonstrate the decision by Sacramento District Attorney to not charge the police officers who shot and killed Stephon Clark last year Getty Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Dominique Harrell stands in solidarity as she joins other protesters staging a sit-in for Stephon Clark at Arden Fair Mall in Sacramento AP Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Representing a group called A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), Jamier Sale leads a crowd of about 50 people in protest of the Sacramento DA's ruling on the Stephon Clark case AP Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Black Lives Matter protesters march through the streets as they demonstrate the decision by Sacramento District Attorney to not charge the police officers who shot and killed Stephon Clark last year Getty Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Black Lives Matter protesters march through the streets as they demonstrate the decision by Sacramento District Attorney to not charge the police officers who shot and killed Stephon Clark last year Getty Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Black Lives Matter protesters block an entrance to a Trader Joe's store as they demonstrate the decision by Sacramento DA's on the Stephon Clark case Getty Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Protesters hold signs bearing a graphic of Stephon Martin Getty Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Black Lives Matter protesters march through the streets as they demonstrate the decision by Sacramento District Attorney to not charge the police officers who shot and killed Stephon Clark last year Getty Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Black Lives Matter protesters march through the streets as they demonstrate the decision by Sacramento District Attorney to not charge the police officers who shot and killed Stephon Clark last year Getty Police shooting verdict sparks protest in California: in pictures Protesters stage a sit-in for Stephon Clark at Arden Fair Mall in Sacramento AP “My thigh,” the boy says through tears, still face-down. Without asking for permission, Sgt Holcomb pulls the boy’s pants down and inspects him for blood. The Oklahoma City Police Department has released a photo of the airsoft gun they recovered from the scene, which a spokesperson for the Department says resembles a real gun. Lorenzo’s lawyer maintains that the shooting was not justified. According to the Washington Post, the video continues for nearly 10 and a half minutes following the shooting and does not ever show any medical services arriving.<doc-sep>But video of the shooting from Holcomb’s body camera, which Lorenzo’s lawyer released to The Washington Post as his family prepares to file a lawsuit, may raise questions about the shooting. The footage is another grim entry in the public catalogue of police shootings — a window into an incident that unraveled in fractions of a second, and one that has prompted multiple interpretations. Lorenzo’s family said they believe the video shows the shooting was unjustified, that it was part of a pattern of misconduct at the Oklahoma City Police Department. Law enforcement officials see an officer defending himself in a moment of potential danger.<doc-sep>
Police in Oklahoma later said they found a BB gun at the scene. The lawyer for the family of a 14-year-old who was shot by police has released body camera video showing an officer in Oklahoma opening fire on the teen, who police believed to be armed, less than a second after yelling "Show me your hands." On March 10, around 5:43 p.m., the Oklahoma City Police Department got a call reporting that three to four people were breaking into a home and that at least two were armed with guns, the department said in a news release posted on March 11 on Facebook. When officers arrived, they heard possible gunshots. In the body camera video, which is 2 minutes 43 seconds long, the officer is outside of a residence and can be heard saying: "Hey, police department. Come on out!" A noise, which the department described as "possible gunshots," can be heard in the distance as the officer nears the house. With his gun raised in his right hand and a radio in his left, the officer can be heard saying: "I think it’s a cap gun. But they are shooting something off." As he reaches an opening in a fence, the officer says: "Show me your hands. Drop it!" He then fires his gun. The person he's shooting at is not visible in the video. "Drop the gun!" he says. "Shots fired. Shots fired. Black male with a gray hoodie had the gun." Moments later, the officer stands over a suspect, identified as 14-year-old Lorenzo Clerkley Jr. by the family's lawyer, who is on his stomach and handcuffed behind his back. "Where are you hit?" the officer asks. "My side. My right side," Clerkley tells the officer before starting to cry. "You're OK," the officer says. The officer locates a bullet hole on the teen's side and later another one in the upper leg. The police department identified the officer who shot the teenager as Sgt. Kyle Holcomb. Holcomb, who has more than nine years of service, saw the teen in the backyard of the home with a gun in his hand and told him to drop the weapon, police said. "The suspect did not comply with the orders and Sergeant Holcomb discharged his firearm and struck the suspect," the release said. Police, who later said they recovered a BB gun at the scene that looked real, maintained that Holcomb sensed potential danger and was defending himself. The family of the teen, however, said that while he and friends had been playing with BB guns at an abandoned house that day, he was not armed at the time of the shooting. "Sergeant Holcomb did not give Lorenzo time to comply with his commands, and did not have probable cause to believe that Lorenzo posed a threat of serious physical harm to anyone when he began shooting. … Further, Holcomb had the cover and protection of the wooden fence when he encountered Lorenzo, who was a safe distance away. And there is no evidence that Lorenzo verbally threatened anyone, physically threatened anyone, attempted to evade arrest or otherwiseresisted arrest. There was simply no justification for Sergeant Holcomb to shoot this young man," the family said in a statement released by its lawyer Daniel Smolen. "We now seek all of the answers. We seek full transparency. We seek justice for Lorenzo." When first responders arrived to the scene, Clerkley was taken to a hospital for "non life-threatening" injuries, the release said. No officers were hurt and Holcomb was placed on paid administrative leave. He was not charged and is back on the force. The family of the teenager called the shooting an example of police misconduct. A police internal investigation is still underway.