Utica, N.Y., community looking for answers after teen shot and killed by police

A community of Southeast Asians who live in upstate New York is looking for answers and justice after police fatally shot a 13-year-old refugee who pointed a replica gun at officers.

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 teenager'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 he ran from police, who have said he was one of two youths stopped in connection with an armed robbery investigation.

Nyah Mway.GoFundMe

Police said Nyah Mway matched a description of a robbery suspect. He ran away from officers while he was 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 police released 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 in which 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 weapon 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 him as two other officers arrive. A gunshot is fired as Nyah 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 from the eighth grade and was returning home from a barbecue when police stopped him, 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-stricken, 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 that 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 group that helps to resettle refugees.

But Doh estimates that number is higher, 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 Nyah'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 drew more than 100 demonstrators, he said.

Nyah’s grieving mom attended a protest Saturday during a City Hall news conference by Mayor Michael Galime and Police Chief Mark Williams. During the event she was screaming and crying loudly.

Galime said the heartbroken reaction "should be met with an understanding that is warranted.”

At the news conference, 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.”

State Attorney General Letitia James said Saturday that prosecutors in her office are investigating Nyah's death.

On Sunday, Galime met with the community at Tabernacle Baptist Church and fielded more questions about the shooting.

He said it was important that 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.

Antonio Planas

Antonio Planas is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.

The Associated Press