Witness says officer did not need to use Taser on teen

A 16-year-old boy is in the hospital after police used a Taser on him, and he fell off the roof of his home.

A neighbor who saw it happen says she thinks police could have acted differently to prevent the boy from falling.

Around 8:30 Tuesday morning Chirell Long was getting ready to go to school, when several police cars pulled up to the house across the street from hers, in the 4400 block of Wrenwood Avenue in North Baltimore.

Officers went into the house, and a short time later Long saw the 16-year-old boy trying to climb out of a second-story window onto the roof-ledge below. ‘He was on the top the way like the black roof, trying to come out there, and they Tasered him and he fell,’ she said.

The fall from a height of more than 10 feet left the boy with serious neck and back injuries. ‘It's definitely a shame. You don't want to see anyone get hurt especially a kid,’ said another neighbor, Towanda Byrd.

The boy had been on home detention for a previous handgun violation in juvenile court. ‘He's a decent kid on the wrong path,’ Long said. ‘Like gangs and into that type of stuff.’

Police went to the home because of an issue with his GPS monitoring device. The boy's parents let them in, that's when they say he tried to run. ‘At some point during the process he engaged police officers and one of the detectives felt compelled to use his Taser,’ said Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Baltimore City Police Department.

The officer that fired the Taser is a 15-year-veteran. He has already been interviewed by the police department’s Internal Affairs unit. ‘We want to go over the incident with a fine-tooth comb, want to find out exactly what happened and make sure that none of our policies and procedures were violated,’ Guglielmi said.

Long said she just spoke with the boy yesterday. From what she saw, she believes officers could have done more to bring the boy into custody safely. ‘It was enough of them where they could have got him, at least tried more to get him back in the house versus just like doing what they did,’ she said.

Lethal force is authorized when an officer feels that his or her safety, or the safety of the public, is threatened.