DENVER (CN) — The 10th Circuit on Tuesday affirmed a lower court’s denial of qualified immunity to an Oklahoma City police officer who shot and injured a 14-year-old boy caught playing with a BB gun in an abandoned house.
“Holcomb cannot show that the district court’s recitation of the facts amounts to a ‘visible fiction,’” U.S. Circuit Judge Nancy Mortiz wrote in a 14-page opinion. “Accordingly, we must accept the district court’s finding that Clerkley was unarmed.”
On March 10, 2019, a neighbor called the police to report teenagers playing in an abandoned house and said one of them might have a gun.
Arriving on scene, Oklahoma City Police Officer Kyle Holcomb remarked that he heard the sounds of a BB gun being fired. Through a fence, Holcomb spotted 14-year-old Lorenzo Clerkley Jr. climbing out of a basement window. Thinking Clerkley was carrying a weapon, Holcomb ordered him to drop it, then fired off four shots, hitting the teenager in the leg and hip.
“The whole encounter lasted seconds, but the parties took starkly different views of it,” the Barack Obama appointee wrote for the panel.
An internal investigation concluded Holcomb was justified in using force because he believed he was in danger. In a lawsuit filed in May 2020, Clerkley’s family maintains he had left his pellet gun inside and was emptyhanded when he encountered Holcomb.
In August 2023, George W. Bush-appointed U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot rejected Holcomb’s qualified immunity claim and denied his request for summary judgment, finding a jury should decide the question of whether Clerkley was carrying anything that posed a threat when Holcomb shot him.
Holcomb appealed, arguing the bodycam footage clearly backed up his decision. But the panel found little clarity because “the low resolution and obstructing vegetation make it difficult to see much detail.”
Clerkley’s attorney praised the court’s decision via email, saying Holcomb could not justify shooting the teenager.
“Our client was ‘guilty’ of nothing more than being an African American teenager playing with his friends on a vacant property. It nearly cost him his life,” attorney Bob Blakemore, who practices with Smolen & Roytman in Oklahoma City, wrote. “The 10th Circuit reaffirmed the clearly established legal principle that an officer, even when responding to a dangerous reported situation, may not shoot an unarmed and unthreatening suspect.”
Blakemore now anticipates seeing the case set for trial.
A spokesperson for the Oklahoma City Police Department declined to comment on the development. Holcomb and the city are represented by attorney Stacey Felkner of the Oklahoma City firm Collins Zorn.
U.S. Circuit Judges Timothy Tymkovich, appointed by George W. Bush, and Donald Trump appointee Joel Carson rounded out the panel.