toy rifle

L.A. police shot and killed a young man who had called them for help during a dispute with his family, after he brandished a toy rifle from the porch of his South L.A. home Saturday afternoon, family and police said.

In testimony to the impact such horrors have on the Ukrainian children who witness them, 7-year-old Yehor, his face etched with the pain, clutched a wooden toy rifle next to destroyed Russian military vehicles near Chernihiv.

Consider the case of Tamir Rice, shot by Cleveland police in 2014 at the age of 12 for holding a toy rifle.

Another sister recalled Rylee as a toddler, carrying around a toy rifle and wearing his sister’s pink princess snow boots.

She said her brother “was a Marine before he knew he was allowed to be a Marine. … He’d carry around his toy rifle and wear his sister’s pink princess snow boots and he’d either be hunting or he was a Marine. Sometimes it would be with nothing on underneath, just a T-shirt.”