Pellet, toy guns can prove fatal
Since 2016, there have been 59 incidents where an officer discharged a weapon because of a “firearm replica”.
Maurice Holley, 55, had two pellet guns tucked into his waistband when he dropped his hands and was fatally shot by a Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy in October. The pellet guns were fashioned to look like replica firearms.
“Fearing he would be shot by the suspect,” the deputy shot Holley nine times, the sheriff’s office said in a news release at the time.
Upon discovery of Holley’s fake firearm, the deputy is heard on dash camera video audibly distressed for several minutes before another deputy is able to make it to the rural location.
Since 2016, there have been 59 incidents in California where an officer discharged a weapon or used another kind of physical force in response to a civilian carrying a “firearm replica,” a Sacramento Bee analysis of state data shows.
It’s a misunderstanding with often lethal consequences in which police perceived fake guns the same as real firearms, The Bee found.
In 2018, such was the case when Darrell Richards, 19, was reported to police when bystanders saw him waving and pointing what appeared to be a gun while walking down a Sacramento thoroughfare.
Richards died later that night after he allegedly pointed the gun at SWAT officers who were clearing Curtis Park backyards in search of him. The incident was not captured on video because of a body camera malfunction, Sacramento Police said. And after he was fatally shot, officers learned that Richards’ firearm was a pellet gun, modeled after a Sig Sauer P225 9mm handgun.
In more than four out of every five incidents — about 51 cases — where police believed a civilian was carrying a firearm the outcome showed it was actually a fake. The civilians died, usually from a gunshot wound, in more than half of the cases.
According to state data, the victims were mostly Hispanic men; and more than one-third of all cases involved people between the ages of 18 and 25, the data shows.
There were two deaths involving children ages 10 and older between 2016 and 2018, the data show.
Officials with the California Department of Justice, which collects the data, said the “firearms replica” designation could cover a range of weapons, including pellet guns, but the agency does not choose.