The family of the autistic Idaho teen who was repeatedly shot by police officers earlier this month confirmed his passing on Saturday.
Victor Perez, 17, had been in a coma since the April 5 incident and was removed from life support after tests showed that he had no brain activity.
The boy, who was autistic, non-verbal, and suffered from cerebral palsy, was shot nine times by officers responding to a call about an apparently intoxicated man holding a knife in a yard.
Perez was not intoxicated but was struggling to walk due to his condition, his family said. A video caught by a neighbor showed the teen falling over when the four officers arrived.
The cops ordered the knife-wielding teen from the other side of a fence to drop the knife 12 seconds before they opened fire, fatally hitting him.
“Everybody was trying to tell the police, no, no,” Perez’s aunt said. “Those four officers didn’t care. They didn’t ask what was happening, what was the situation.”
“How’s he going to jump the fence when he can barely walk?”
Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad said after the boy’s death that the incident caused the community “pain and grief” after promising to address “this matter with the seriousness and thoroughness it deserves.”
Perez’s aunt said her late nephew loved watching professional wrestling and taking walks while holding his mother’s hand.
“I’m going to miss him when he used to get in his weird moods, and I used to put him to bed,” she said.
“He wouldn’t want to sleep and would wake up again, and I would have to walk him back to the bed. I would promise him, ‘Hey, I’ll be back tomorrow but you need to lay down and sleep.’”
