New details emerge in police shooting of 13-year-old boy in New York

As the family of a 13-year-old boy killed by police in Utica, New York, demanded justice, the city's police chief said Monday that the teenager still had a realistic-looking replica gun in his hand when he was shot.

The boy, identified as Nyah Mway, was shot in the chest by a Utica police officer Friday night after he and a friend were stopped on a street by officers investigating a robbery, authorities said.

“It's very heartbreaking for the family because they lost a child,” Mway's uncle, Lay Htoo, told ABC News, adding that his nephew recently graduated from eighth grade.

Htoo said the shooting devastated his family, who moved to Utica eight years ago after escaping civil unrest in Myanmar and spending time in a refugee camp in Thailand.

He said the family came to America to avoid violence and now faced it.

Htoo questioned why police shot his nephew after he was thrown to the ground by an officer and, according to a video recorded by a bystander and posted on social media, beaten.

“They don't really need to pull out their guns and shoot him,” Htoo said, adding that he believes police could have used a stun gun on his nephew.

But Utica Police Chief Mark Williams said investigators reviewed police body camera video frame by frame and found the officers had reason to fear for their safety.

“We were able to break down these images that you saw of a person with a gun. In one of these images that we found, he [Mway] “He was on the ground and still had the gun in his hand,” Williams said in an interview with ABC affiliate WSYR in Syracuse.

Williams added: “Despite our efforts at transparency, people weren’t ready to hear the facts, and I can understand that. All they see is a dead 13-year-old kid and no one feels good about that.”

The three officers were identified by the department as Patrick Husnay, a six-year veteran of the force; Bryce Patterson, a four-year veteran of the department; and Andrew Citriniti, who joined the force two and a half years ago after serving as an Oneida County sheriff's deputy.

According to police officials, Husnay was the officer who shot and killed Mway.

Williams said the incident marked the first fatal officer-involved shooting in his department since September 2022.

The chief said he is now concerned for the safety of the officers involved in the fatal incident, particularly Husnay.

“Within 12 hours, people were posting images of his photo and his home address,” Williams said, adding that the police department provides protection for officers.

The shooting happened shortly after 10 p.m. ET Friday in a residential neighborhood in west Utica.

At the time of the incident, Husnay, Pattetson and Citriniti — members of the police department's crime prevention unit — were assisting in the investigation of at least two recent robberies involving suspects described as Asian males who brandished a black-colored firearm at their victims, according to a police statement.

Williams said police have not confirmed whether Mway and his friend were involved in the robberies.

“Based on the identifying factors listed during the robbery, officers approached Nyah Mway and the other minor as they matched the descriptions of the robbery suspects and were in close proximity to the previous robbery around the same time of day,” the police statement said.

Police justified the stop by saying one of the boys was walking on the roadway where sidewalks are provided, a violation of New York State Vehicle and Traffic Law.

According to publicly released body camera footage from the three officers involved in the incident, Patterson approached Mway on the sidewalk and asked him to take his hands out of his pockets. The footage shows Mway holding his hands up and then putting them back in his pockets, prompting Patterson to repeat his command.

“Can I search you?” [to] “Make sure you don’t have any weapons on you?” Patterson asked Mway, the body camera video shows.

But before Patterson could search Mway, the teen lunged to his left and began running down the street with Patterson and the two other officers in pursuit, the video shows.

The footage appears to show Mway turning around and pointing a gun at Patterson and the other officers. The officers can be heard yelling on the video that Mway had a gun and repeatedly ordering him to “drop it!”

Mway appeared to trip and fall to the ground and as he tried to get up, Patterson grabbed him and tackled him to the ground, according to body camera footage.

“He shot me. He turned around like this,” Patterson later told a supervisor, showing how Mway allegedly pointed a gun at him, according to his body camera footage.

As Patterson was on top of Mway and struggling with him, Husnay pulled out his gun and fired, hitting the teen in the chest, according to the video and police statement.

As officers began performing CPR on Mway, Husnay is seen in the body camera footage retrieving a weapon he initially identified as a black Glock 22 pistol lying in the grass next to where Mway fell.

Police later said the gun was a replica Glock 17 pellet gun. Williams said Monday that the gun looked like a real handgun and even had the word Glock printed on it.

During an on-scene interview with a supervisor, Husnay said he was the only officer who fired his weapon. He said he fired “one round directly at the ground,” according to body camera video that remained on during his interrogation.

“Is it possible that the suspect shot you?” the police chief asked Husnay, according to the video.

Husnay replied: “I don’t know.”

Mway was taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Williams said the three officers involved in the incident were on paid administrative leave, which is standard practice in investigations of officer-involved shootings.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James said her agency's Bureau of Special Investigations is conducting an independent investigation into the shooting.

The shooting immediately sparked an angry reaction from the community. A large crowd attended a vigil for Mway on Saturday and chanted “No justice, no peace.”

Williams acknowledged that the shooting damaged the trust his police department had built over the years with the Utica area's Karen ethnic minority community, estimated at about 8,000 people. He said he hopes to restore that trust by being as transparent as possible about the incident.

“Justice is not being served as quickly as we would all like,” Williams said Monday, adding that the state attorney general’s office’s investigation could take up to a year. “There needs to be an investigation. We need to consider all the information, not just a video that was released.”