Sensitive content warning: This article contains subject material that may be especially upsetting for readers, including references to gun violence involving police and the death of a young person.
According to officials, 15-year-old Ryan Gainer was shot by a San Bernardino sheriff’s deputy on March 9 in Apple Valley, CA, approximately 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles, and died at the hospital. Tributes to the teenager, whose family says he was autistic and aspired to become an engineer, spread across the internet, with one TikTok at a million likes.
Meanwhile, The Guardian has reported that the sheriff’s department in question is under scrutiny and acting defensive. Ryan’s family stated, via their lawyer, that the shooting “did not appear to be warranted.”
Ryan Gainer, who ran cross country, had been out on a run. He was frustrated because “his parents had demanded he complete his household chores before he would be allowed to play video games or listen to music on his computer,” according to what DeWitt Lacy, the family’s attorney, told the Los Angeles Times. With a note that some people with autism “experience more heightened emotions,” the Times reported that, in his upset, Ryan broke glass on the front door.
A family member reportedly then called 911 because of the glass and Ryan hitting his sister, and asked them to “take [Ryan] in.” (According to Lacy, the sheriff’s department had previous experience with Ryan and the family.) Instead of being taken in, though, Ryan was shot by the sheriff’s deputy who responded to the call, who claimed the 15-year-old “threatened the deputy with a gardening tool,” per the LA Times.
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Ryan Gainer’s cause of death is still being debated: The sheriff’s department says an autopsy has yet to be completed, but the Gainer family claims law enforcement waited to provide aid in the aftermath of Ryan’s shooting. A preliminary investigation suggested that two sheriff’s deputies shot Ryan; the department claims the officers were following protocol. In its reporting, the LA Times noted that this isn’t the first time the San Bernardino sheriff’s department has come under scrutiny for use of force.
After the sheriff’s department attempted to justify shooting the 15-year-old, saying Ryan was “large of stature,” Lacy told The Guardian, “Across America, we’ve often heard of the ‘Herculean Black man’ and ‘wild savage’ that needs to be put down. We won’t allow Ryan’s name and image to be concocted or depicted in that way…. They used the deadliest action they could do because of this myth of the Black man, the Black monster…. He was just a kid. It’s the responsibility of law enforcement to deal with these types of situations without killing us.”
Zoe Gross, advocacy director at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, told the LA Times, “The autistic community has seen far too many cases of law enforcement profiling, targeting, and using excessive, sometimes deadly force on Black autistic people. Because of the prevalence of police violence and the amount of unmet need in our communities, we must fund and implement alternatives to policing.”
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