Prosecutor: Officers won’t face charges in teen’s death
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A black teenager pointed a BB gun that looked like a handgun at police before he was fatally shot by officers outside an emergency youth centre in eastern Arkansas, a prosecutor said Wednesday in announcing no charges would be filed against the officers.
Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington released body camera footage that shows 16-year-old Aries Clark was holding and raising what appeared to be a pistol on July 25 outside East Arkansas Youth Services in Marion.
The officers “ordered, cajoled, encouraged and begged” Clark to get rid of the gun, Ellington wrote in a letter to the head of Arkansas State Police, which investigated the shooting. In one video, an officer can be heard promising to put his gun down if Clark drops his, telling the teen: “You’re somebody’s kid, man. We don’t want to do this.”
Ellington said the two officers who fired their weapons — Brannon Hinkle and Wesley Smith — were justified in using lethal force. Both officers are white.