Maryland cop fatally shoots teen who allegedly threatened him with what turned out to be an airsoft gun



A Maryland State Police trooper responding to two "suspicious person" calls fatally shot a 16-year-old who allegedly threatened the officer with a knife and what turned out to be an airsoft gun, authorities said Tuesday.

What are the details?

Superintendent Woodrow Jones said during a new conference that the initial 911 caller in Leonardtown reported saying they believed the "guy" had a gun, before hanging up on the dispatcher. The second caller gave a street address for the individual purportedly acting suspiciously.

Jones said that a witness described the teen, Peyton Ham, standing in a driveway in "a shooting stance, pointing a gun at the trooper" when he arrived alone. Ham allegedly told the officer he also had a knife. The officer then shot the teen, wounding him.

According to Jones, another witness claimed "Ham then pulled out a knife and tried to get up," the Associated Press reported. The trooper says he told Ham to drop the knife, but the teen allegedly refused, so the officer shot him a second time.

Fellow officers who later responded to assist at the scene rendered aid to Ham, who was taken to a hospital and later died.

According to the AP, both the trooper and Ham are white. There is no body camera footage or dashcam footage of the incident.

Maryland State Trooper shoots, kills teen that had a knife and airsoft gun, officials saywww.youtube.com

Anything else?

Online observers drew a correlation between the Maryland shooting and the 2014 high-profile death of the black 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was killed by an officer in Cleveland while holding what was later found to be an airsoft pistol.

Rice was shot "within two seconds" of officers arriving and seeing the child at Cudell Park, while responding to a report of a man with a gun. The pre-teen's replica gun was missing the telltale orange tip that is typically affixed to the non-lethal toy guns.

Officer Timothy Loehmann, who killed Rice, did not face charges in the incident that officials called "a perfect storm of human error."

Columbia University associate professor John McWhorter tweeted of the Maryland shooting, "I have often written that we simply never hear about whites killed by cops in the same ways as blacks. But I've never quite known of a parallel to one case: what happened to Tamir Rice - till now."

I have often written that we simply never hear about whites killed by cops in the same ways as blacks. But I've nev… https://t.co/Z5U8tESh2u
— John McWhorter (@John McWhorter)1618430685.0

McWhorter received mixed reviews and further calls for discussion over drawing the connection.

One person wrote, "You're ignoring that the police initially claimed that Rice pulled a gun on them. It was only the video footage that proved the police were lying. In this case there is no video footage and for some reason you're backing the police version without any verification."

Another added, "Also, now having read this story (assuming it's true which is not a given yet) this person is not similar to Tamir Rice at all, his having a knife on him and pointing the rifle at the cop. Tamir Rice was a kid whiling away his time. Cops pulled up and shot him in a millisecond."

Someone else replied, "I agree that knowing the details after the fact we can see a difference. But how is it different from the officers perspective when they have a gun of any kind pointed at them?"

New York woman faces 25 years in prison over felony weapons charges — after police find cache of fake guns in her home



A New York woman is facing weapons charges after the NYPD stormed her home and seized at least 22 guns from her apartment.

According to various reporting, members of the NYPD raided Elizaveta Zlatkis' home in 2019 and discovered the weaponry. A later investigation found that 21 of the 22 firearms were not real.

Analysis from the department showed that all weapons were either inoperable or fake, and Elizaveta Zlatkis has said that she lends the fake weapons to rappers and producers to use in music videos or other artistic productions.

What are the details?

Authorities in 2019 raided Zlatkis' home and charged her with first-degree criminal possession of a weapon. She faces a possible 25-year prison sentence.

According to the Forest Hills Post, NYPD officers "acting on a tip" raided Zlatkis' home and discovered the cache of weaponry in her apartment.

"The next day, cops from the 112th Precinct arranged the 22 seized weapons on a table and posed for a Twitter photo commemorating the bust," the outlet reported.

"There was just one problem with the narrative and the charges: 21 of the 22 supposed firearms were airsoft rifles, toy replicas, or starter pistols — the kind used at track meets — incapable of firing ammunition, according to the NYPD's own laboratory reports," the Forest Hills Post noted.

According to the Queens Daily Eagle, Zlatkis said that just one of the 22 weapons was a real firearm. The trigger, Zlatkis said, hand grip, and other internal components were all missing.

Bearing Arms reported that while the guns were either fake or in operable, "in the eyes of the law Zlatkis may very well be a gun owner, since a firearm is defined federally to include a finished frame or receiver for a gun, even if it doesn't have a trigger attached to it."

"Even starter pistols meet the definition of a firearm under federal law because the ATF says they can be 'readily converted' into a real firearm," the outlet said.

What else?

"I look completely crazy," she said of the arrest and charges. "It's humiliating."

Patch reported that Zlatkis, 31, and her husband, Elvis Selimi face "multiple misdemeanors charges in connection with the seizure," which took place on Dec. 27, 2019.

A rapper named Crucial told the Eagle, "We do videos with [the guns] as props. I didn't know you could actually get in trouble with all that. That's wild. They're fake."

In a statement, detective Denise Moroney, a spokesperson for the NYPD, said, "Firearms were recovered on Friday, December 27, 2019, in regard to a search warrant and deemed inoperable at a later date."

The Daily Eagle reported that Zlatkis has refused to take a plea deal, and Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz has declined to drop the case over the last year.

"We do not comment on pending cases," a spokesperson for the district attorney's office told Patch this week.