The headlines of the two articles don't really convey how fucking horrible this was. To anyone scrolling by who wasn't going to click on the links, here is a short summary:
The store owner got his gun out, and he and his son started chasing the 14-year-old boy, because they FALSELY believed he stole FOUR BOTTLES OF WATER.
The boy who was being CHASED WITH A GUN FOR NO REASON did carry a gun, and it would have been very much justified to actually take it out (because he feared for his life since he was being CHASED WITH A GUN FOR NO REASON), but witnesses never saw it in his hands, and at no point did he actually point it at his two pursuers. He had his back towards them the entire time because he was FLEEING.
The kid stumbled and fell, dropping his gun in the process. The gun was only ever seen on the ground next to his body, it probably fell from his waistband or pocket or whatever, not his hands. And since it was dropped, he did not have it on him AT ALL when he was murdered. He was SHOT IN THE BACK WHILE LYING UNARMED ON THE GROUND.
The sheriff's report written in 2023 said that this was "not a bias-motivated incident" even though there is literally zero ambiguity that this man was just itching to shoot a Black kid. There is no other explanation for why you would take your gun out and chase him more than 100 yards over a vague, weak, unfounded suspicion that he might have stolen four (4) bottles of water. In and of itself, the train of thought "this Black kid was holding four bottles of water at some point, and now he's leaving the store, clearly there's no chance that he simply put them back, he must have stolen them" is already racist as hell. But the cops say "well there's absolutely no indication that shooting an unarmed 14-year-old Black boy because you falsely suspected him of stealing a few dollars worth of water was motivated by bias" because of fucking course they do.
The murderer was found "not guilty" because the self-defence reasoning was accepted even though multiple witnesses confirmed that the kid did not have a gun out as he was running from the store, and definitely did not point it at his pursuers at any point. If anything, the kid would have been the person for whom self-defence would have been justified since he was the one being actively chased with a gun.
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