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police officer in Jonesboro,Georgia , pointed a gun at five Blackteenagers in a video that trended Monday. - A group of neighbors gathered to keep the boys calm and try to get the officer to put down his gun.
- The officer pointed the gun at boys while responding to a 911 call about a group of teenagers trying to steal from a shop, fighting in a parking lot, and brandishing a gun.
- Because the 911 caller said the teens had a gun, the police officer "approached them with his duty weapon drawn and pointed at the juveniles," Clayton County police told CNN.
- The boys later told the police officer that they had were previously holding a BB gun that they threw in the bushes.
A group of neighbors in Jonesboro, Georgia, protected a group of Black teenagers after a police officer pointed a gun at them.
Video of the incident was shared to Facebook by Shannelle Ladd on Monday. The clip showed an unidentified police officer pointing a gun at the five teens, who all had their hands up above their heads. Adult bystanders can be heard yelling at the officer to put his gun down.
"Please, sir. They are kids," Ladd can be heard shouting in the video. "Why you got a gun out?"
The video circulated on social media this week as people called for police reform in the wake of the death of George Floyd.
Clayton County police told CNN that a shop owner had called 911 and reported five teenagers that he said tried to steal from the shop, and then fought in the parking lot. The shop owner said in one 911 call that one of the teens had a gun.
CNN reviewed surveillance footage from the shop and found it did not show teens fighting in the parking lot.
When police arrived on the scene, the teenagers were already gone, but an officer later found them walking down the street and yelled at them to stop, according to body camera footage seen by CNN.
"Due to the allegation that the juveniles were in possession of a gun, the officer approached them with his duty weapon drawn and pointed at the juveniles," police said.
Bystanders quickly started to gather nearby — Ladd told CNN that about 30 people were there telling the kids to remain calm and asking the police officer to put down his gun.
According to CNN, the officer had his handgun out, pointed at the ground, for four minutes until back up arrived and patted them down.
When police asked the boys about the gun the 911 caller said they had, the teens said they had a BB gun that resembled a semi-automatic pistol that they had thrown away in a nearby bush, CBS 46 reported.
No charges were filed in the incident.
Lashunda Jackson, the mother of one of the teens, said she was never contacted by police after the incident.
"I haven't had any police contact, nobody called me. I found out about the video this morning. My daughter all day way in Ohio sent me the video. She found out before I found out about this situation," Jackson told CBS 46. "I was just wondering, like, why wouldn't the police contact the parents. They didn't contact any parents."
Kamari Moore, one of the teens involved in the incident, said he feared for his life during the incident.
"I thought I was gonna die because I've seen all these black kids dying and to have myself in that, it was just crazy," he told reporters at a press conference.
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