A community of Southeast Asians who live in upstate New York are looking for answers and justice after a 13-year-old refugee who pointed a replica gun at officers was fatally shot by police.
Members of the Karen ethnic minority in Utica, New York, which is about 55 miles east of Syracuse, have rallied together in outrage and sadness since the teen’s death Friday night.
Karens are among the groups warring with the military rulers of Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma.
Before he was shot Friday, Nyah Mway was tackled to the ground after running from police, who have said that he was one of two youths stopped in connection with an armed robbery investigation.
Police said Nyah Mway matched a description of a robbery suspect. He ran away from officers while being frisked and then pointed a replica gun at them, officials have said.
“There is no justification,” LuPway Doh, a Karen leader in Utica said Monday. “We have a lot of questions that need to be answered, especially, why the kids needed to be stopped, and all the way to why the trigger needed to be pulled.”
Doh said the community demands to know whether the teens were racially profiled when they were stopped and whether police used excessive force.
Body camera video released by police Saturday shows an officer saying he needs to pat down the juveniles to ensure they don’t have any weapons. Immediately one of the two, identified by police as Nyah, runs away.
Authorities froze frames of the video where a Nyah is running and appears to point the replica gun at the pursuing officers. Police edited the video to insert a red circle around the replica weapons to show it to viewers.
It was a replica of a Glock 17 Gen 5 handgun with a detachable magazine, police said.
A bystander video posted to Facebook shows an officer chasing after Nyah and tackling him to the ground. It also shows the officer punching the teen as two other officers arrive. A gunshot is fired as the teen is on the ground.
The teens matched the descriptions of the robbery suspects and were in the same area where the incident occurred, police said. One teen was also walking in the road, which is against state traffic law.
Nyah, had graduated the eighth grade and was returning home from a barbecue when he was stopped by police, according to a GoFundMe page for his family.
“He has never gotten in trouble with law enforcement before, he was a good kid. The UPD video cam, the witness testimonies, and stories they told my family don’t add up, especially when they told my parents (who don’t speak English at all) that there was a shoot out,” Nyah’s sister said on the fundraising page. “We need answers. In the body cam, we could hear an officer saying, “Why did he shoot?”
Nyah’s parents and three siblings are grief-striken, they said on the GoFundMe page.
“My brother was an outgoing kid who loved to be outside biking and playing with his friends and family. Our parents and grandparents did not flee war & corrupt military to be persecuted by American police,” the family wrote.
A Utica police spokesperson said in an email Monday afternoon officials “don’t believe the family was ever told that there was a shootout. Maybe something was missed in translation but we would not have said that.”
The spokesperson said there was no additional information to be released Monday.
Utica, a city with a population of about 65,000, is home to more than 4,200 people from Myanmar, according to The Center, a nonprofit that helps to resettle refugees.
But Doh estimates that number is higher and closer to 8,000 or 9,000. He said many people in the Karen community, especially adults and their parents, fled their country to get away from oppression, which makes the teen’s death that much more difficult.
“It brings back a lot of traumas that we ourselves don’t even want to talk about, but unfortunately we have to live through again,” Doh said. “And a lot of parents, a lot of older adults who went through the trauma themselves back home are traumatized again, will be telling their kids, they’ll go out, you can get killed by the police.”
Since the deadly shooting, Karens have protested at City Hall multiple times, Doh, said. Each protest garnering more than one hundred demonstrators, he said.
Nyah’s grieving mom attended a protest Saturday during a City Hall news conference by Utica Mayor Michael Galime and Utica Police Chief Mark Williams. During the event she was screaming and crying loudly.
The mayor said the heartbroken reaction “should be met with an understanding that is warranted.”
At the news conference, Police Chief Mark Williams said officers often have to make life-or-death decisions in the blink of an eye.
“Our officers quite frequently work in situations that are very chaotic, ever-evolving and they have to make split-second decisions,” he said. “We meet deadly physical force with deadly physical force, including that there appears to be a handgun, whether it’s replica or not.”
New York State Attorney General Letitia James said Saturday that prosecutors in her office are investigating the teen’s death.
On Sunday, the mayor met with the community at the Tabernacle Baptist Church and fielded more questions about the teen’s shooting.
He said it was important he attend and get insight from his residents.
“To see, feel and hear, not just the response, but what the community is really going through,” Galime said.
