13-year-old shot to death by police for open-carrying a toy rifle

"Why did they kill him?" cried Andy's mother. "Why??"


The scene of Andy’s slaying.

SANTA ROSA, CA — An innocent boy faced a deadly encounter with police when they thought he was exercising the right to bear arms. Deputies shot the young teen several times because they thought he was holding an “assault weapon” — something that the government elites believe they have the exclusive right to carry. It turned out that he was only holding a phony plastic toy. The eighth grader was pronounced dead in a grassy field that he was crossing on his way home.



At about 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 22, Andy Lopez, age 13, was walking home from playing with his friends. He and his buddies liked to play with air-powered pellet guns, and he was carrying one he had borrowed.

As Andy journeyed home, he was spotted by two hoplophobic predators employed by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department. They spotted what he was carrying.

Male subject bearing arms in my sector. Lock and load.

Themselves armed to the teeth, the deputies moved in with their tax-subsidized vehicle to enforce some life-destroying, unconstitutional gun control measures.

The deputies called for backup and allegedly ordered Andy to drop his gun as he walked through a field of dry grass.

“At some point immediately thereafter, the deputies fired several rounds from their handguns at the subject, striking him several times,” Lt. Dennis O’Leary said. The boy fell to the ground, he said, and “landed on top of the rifle he was carrying.”

Deputies leapt on top of the boy and handcuffed him. Shot 7 times, he was unresponsive, and was pronounced dead at the scene.

“First I heard a single siren and within seconds I heard seven shots go off, sounded like a nail gun, is what I thought it was,” said Brian Zastrow, a neighboring resident, to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. “After that I heard multiple sirens.”

Predictably, police claimed that Andy turned toward them and aimed his rifle at him. The Press Democrat reports the police version of the story.

The veteran deputy, one of the department’s training officers, told investigators that after he ordered the boy to drop the gun, Lopez began turning toward him and raised the gun’s barrel in his direction, police officials said.

Imagine walking home and strange men start barking orders at you. Would the natural reaction be to turn toward them? Andy didn’t stand a chance.



Police later described the toy as a “replica of an assault weapon” with a large ammunition magazine. Very scary sounding. In a twisted double-standard, anyone seen carrying a firearm in California is subject to certain harassment and possible death, unless that is, you are government employee. The privileged caste can parade around carrying real assault weapons, donning badges, and terrorizing anyone who dares to exercise one of America’s most fundamental freedoms.

This was the 3rd fatal shooting committed by Bay-area police in 24 hours. The deputies have been placed on administrative leave. Their names have not been released.

A toy pistol was placed at his memorial, tied in a red bow, as his friends and family gathered.

One of Andy’s friends, Gabriel Roque, said, “I’m devastated. There’s a difference between a cold-hearted killer walking down the street with a gun than a little kid walking down the street with a BB gun. There’s something wrong.” His mother called the deputies “trigger happy.”

“He was a great boy and I treated him like he was my son,” said grief-stricken family friend Alma Galvan. “Why did they have to kill him?”

Andy liked to play basketball and play the trumpet. “Andy was a very loved student, a very popular, very handsome young man, very smart and capable,” said assistant principal Linsey Gannon of Lawrence Cook Middle School. “Our community has been rocked by his loss.”

His father, Rodrigo Lopez last saw his son before work that morning. “I told him what I tell him every day,” he said in Spanish. “Behave yourself.”



“Why did they kill him?” cried Andy’s mother, Sujey Annel Cruz Cazarez. “Why??”

Why?

The root cause of Andy Lopez’s death is the fact that police felt compelled to approach him at all.

The fact is that every single encounter with the police — big or small — can result in life-changing outcomes or death. From a traffic stop to a wellness check, interacting with the government is inherently dangerous. Any flinch could be deemed a threat. Failure to react to their demands could provoke deadly consequences. Being armed or challenging their authority could be a death sentence. Its impossible to know if you’re beings stopped by Officer Friendly or Judge Dredd.

The solution is to leave people alone. Had Andy been left to walk home in peace, he’d still be alive today. In a free society, people would be allowed to carry a firearm without teams of hypocritical bullies accosting them. Police interactions would be limited to cases of violence. And no, holding an arbitrary tool or object is not tantamount to committing violence.

In a free society, the right to keep and bear arms would be respected. It would not confined to keeping guns locked in a vault in your home, only if they look a certain way, only after paying the government for a permission slip, and only after giving them details about everything you own. What citizens own, and the manner in which they carry it, is not the government’s business.

Open carry is legal in the majority of U.S. states. California has some of the most draconian gun control laws in the nation. And once again, a life is ruined because of “common sense” regulations that naive statists have eagerly embraced.

Andy should have been left alone. How many more have to die because of gun control zealots and their efforts to “keep us safe”?