Brooklyn Family Sues NYPD After Teen Seeking Help Was Allegedly Turned Away

A Brooklyn family is suing the New York City Police Department and the city of New York, claiming that local police sent a teen to his death when they refused him shelter from a gunman in a station house, the New York Post reports.

According to the report, 16-year-old Laquan Nelson was running away from a fight on a basketball court in June 2014. First he asked some police officers in a patrol car for help. Those cops allegedly told the young boy to go across the street so that he would be in an area covered by the 79th Precinct, family lawyer Douglass Herbert told the Post, and therefore not their problem.

The teen then ran into the nearby 88th Precinct station house in the Clinton Hill neighborhood, the lawyer added, where he was again sent away.

“My cousin said, ‘They wasn’t listening to me and they kicked me out. The cops weren’t trying to hear what I was saying,’ ” Laquan’s cousin 19-year-old Isiah Freeman told the Post. “They could have helped us. They tried to play us like we were lying, but we ain’t trying to lie! We’re trying to live!”

Laquan was shot to death upon exiting the building.

“He was shot immediately—he was literally on the steps,” Herbert said.

The Post notes that the NYPD is investigating the shooting as an active homicide, but says no evidence has been found that the teen was in the precinct before he was killed. According to police sources, the boy never went into the building.

Read more at the New York Post.