Police officers killed an unarmed 17-year-old in Northeast Austin on Friday morning in what Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis characterized as “potentially a suicide by police.”
The Austin Police Department responded to a 911 call at 3:51 a.m. Friday about a teen in a parking lot possibly brandishing a gun. Officers responded to the scene and found the 17-year-old, a Black male, on the playground at a community park in the 10100 block of Baden Lane, Davis said at a press conference on Friday afternoon.
Body cam footage released by APD on Friday shows officers approaching the playground and telling the teen to keep his hands up repeatedly. Shortly after, the teen appears to lift his shirt and reach for his waistband, and officers immediately fire multiple times, causing him to fall to the ground. Officers shoot again in response to the teen apparently moving on the ground.
After securing the scene, Davis said, the officers rendered aid until Austin-Travis County EMS arrived. The teen died on the scene at 4:25 a.m.
APD said it will release the teen’s name after identification from the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Officers didn’t find a gun on the scene. A water bottle was in the teen’s waistband, Davis said.
APD said it determined that the initial 911 call came from the teen’s phone. Audio from the call shared by police starts with the dispatcher asking if the caller needs police, fire, EMS or mental health services. The caller responds with police. Police radio traffic audio released by APD indicates that the caller hung up and didn’t respond to a follow-up call.
“All points are indicating that this was a suicide by police,” Davis said.
Davis said APD has not had prior interactions with the teen.
“A young man lost his life,” she said. “I cannot imagine the pain and the grief that his family is going through, and I want them to know that I am thinking about them. And I am very sorry about this incident.”
The three officers involved in the shooting were identified in a press release as Alexis Cruz, Jake Pitcher and Avery Zucchi, each with two to four years of service with APD. They have been placed on administrative leave as part of APD protocol.
“Officers are often required to make life-or-death decisions in seconds. This was a rapidly evolving incident,” Davis said. She said that officers arrived at the scene believing that someone was armed with a gun, informing their response.
Chris Harris, a board member of Equity Action, an Austin criminal justice nonprofit, called the shooting a “horrible tragedy.”
“A kid was shot and killed by police on a playground,” he said.
He called for a full and independent investigation into the shooting and the police department’s characterization of it as a suicide. Assuming that is true, Harris said, the shooting reveals a deeper issue with how people interact with law enforcement.
“It’s a horrible indictment on the institution that people in our community know that they can call the police, and be killed by them, even without harming anyone, even without having a weapon,” Harris said. “It demands overhaul, upheaval of this institution.”
Chas Moore, founder of the Austin Justice Coalition, connected the shooting to past incidents in which Austin police officers killed people experiencing mental health crises — including Mauris DeSilva, who was fatally shot in 2019 while holding a knife.
Moore said it was apparent that the 911 caller sounded troubled over the phone, and he questioned whether officers could have offered more help after seeing a young person at a playground in the middle of the night.
“This young boy, and all people that call 911 needing [a] mental health response, should not be at danger of losing their lives,” he said.
There will be both criminal and administrative investigations into the shooting: the first led by the APD Special Investigations Unit and the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, and the other by the APD Internal Affairs Unit and Austin Police Oversight.
APD said the investigation is in the early stages, and the details it provided Friday are still preliminary.
