A 17-year-old was shot and killed by Knoxville, Tennessee police after a woman called the police on him.
Regina Perkins, the mother of Anthony Thompson’s girlfriend Alexus Page, has since apologized for calling the police that day.
Thompson was killed on April 12 in an Austin-East Magnet High School bathroom after and Page got into a physical altercation at the school. The two dated for nine months.
Perkins called the police on the 17-year-old after she couldn’t reach his mother.
Officer Jonathan Clabough went to Perkins’ home to take a report, and that is when she saw a helicopter flying over the school and was told it was on lockdown.
Perkins said she told police that Thompson was likely unarmed.
“I am so sorry, and I never meant for anything to happen to him,” Perkins said. “We are mourning, my daughter is grieving the loss of her first love, and we also want answers and justice in this case…This could have been prevented. That child should not be dead, and my condolences sincerely go out to Anthony’s family. There are many rumors, but this is the truth about what happened before KPD got there. We all want justice for Anthony. He should still be here.”
Details of the shooting haven’t been shared. However, a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation release stated that the KPD received a “report of a student possibly armed with a gun,” the “student’s gun was fired,” law enforcement “fired twice,” and that “preliminary examinations indicate the bullet that struck the KPD officer was not fired from the student’s handgun.”
Knoxville’s mayor and three of the four officers under investigation for the situation ask for body cam footage to be released, despite the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the Knoxville Police Department, and the Knox County District Attorney General’s Office declining to release the footage.
