Off-duty safety guard faces homicide cost for gunning down 17-year-old returning BB gun to sporting good retailer | EUROtoday

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An off-duty safety guard in Seattle has been charged with murdering teenage boy who was returning a faulty airsoft gun to a sporting items store

Hazrat Ali Rohani, 17, was visiting a Big 5 department in Renton, Washington along with his mates final Wednesday night when 51-year-old Aaron Brown Myers approached the group with an actual gun in his hand, in keeping with court docket paperwork.

Even although he had not been employed to guard the shop and had no authority to offer them orders, Myers allegedly threatened the boys into dropping their ‘guns’, tackled one in all them to the bottom, and finally shot Rohani a minimum of seven occasions.

He later advised investigators that he believed the youngsters had been about to commit a theft and felt “a duty to act”, claiming that they repeatedly ignored his instructions to give up.

However, surveillance footage contradicts Myers’ account of occasions, in keeping with a police assertion seen by The Independent.

“The defendant took it upon himself to conduct ’overwatch’ in a Renton parking lot, despite the fact that he is not a member of law enforcement and thus has not been trained in how to safely prevent crime,” prosecutors stated in court docket filings on Monday.

”The defendant attacked three youngsters who had not dedicated any crime, and at each stage of the interplay selected to escalate with an increasing number of violence till it culminated in taking the lifetime of seventeen-year-old [Rohani].”

The prosecutors requested a decide to set Myers’ bail at $2m with the intention to stop him from fleeing or committing another violent offences.

They added that Myers had beforehand adopted a random citizen by means of two shops in 2022 as a result of he wrongly believed they’d a gun. In that incident, he known as 911 and allegedly advised the dispatcher that he “might have to shoot”.

Monday’s expenses got here after two separate vigils had been held close by for Aayden Hayes, a 13-year-old shot useless in Bellevue on May 29, and Amarr Murphy-Paine, a 17-year-old killed whereas trying to interrupt up a battle throughout lunch break at his Seattle highschool.

In a possible trigger assertion filed by the Renton Police Department, investigators saidthat Myers was “distraught and crying” after his arrest and needed to be given a trash can to vomit into.

Once he calmed down, he advised investigators that he was a licensed safety guard and was voluntarily doing “overwatch” within the car parking zone as a result of he had seen “numerous crimes” happen there.

Myers stated that he thought the boys had been carrying a Glock and “felt like he did not have time to call 911”. He approached them from behind and threatened them along with his gun, telling them to drop their weapons.

According to the police report, Myers claimed that not one of the youngsters ever complied along with his orders to place their fingers up.

Yet surveillance footage allegedly confirmed one of many youngsters putting his gun on the bottom, and two of them – together with Rohani – reacting to Myers’ orders by placing their fingers in entrance of their our bodies and lengthening their fingers to indicate they had been carrying no weapons.

“Despite their compliance, the defendant then escalated the situation further, tackling [one of the teens] and pinning him to the ground, while still holding his gun trained on the [other] teenagers,” prosecutors alleged.

“He claimed he did this to prevent [the first boy] from reaching for the airsoft pistol he’d already placed on the ground, but failed to take the obvious step of securing the toy gun, rather than assaulting the teen who had carried it.”

At that time, Myers advised police, one of many youngsters reached into his waistband for a gun and refused to cease when ordered. Myers feared for his life and shot the boy “numerous times”.

Surveillance footage confirmed the boy’s proper hand “briefly lower[ing] to his waist area” earlier than being shot, police stated.

For their half, the 2 surviving youngsters advised police that they’d repeatedly knowledgeable Myers that they had been solely carrying “BB guns”.

Airsoft weapons are duplicate weapons that fireplace plastic pellets and are utilized in non-lethal capturing matches just like paintball. In informal contexts, they’re sometimes called BB weapons.

This story was up to date at 7:37pm Pacific Time on Monday June 10, 2024 to incorporate newly-released particulars about Myers’ expenses.