Officers with the department’s Gang Intervention Unit were nearby and arrived to see the 15-year-old armed with a gun, Hayden said. They were in an unmarked police car and plain clothes but wearing marked police vests. One officer got out of the passenger side of the car and confronted the boy, Hayden said.

When the boy turned toward the officer with the gun, the officer fired several times, Hayden said. A gun was recovered by police at the scene, but it does not appear the teen fired any shots, Hayden said.

Tameka Tolen, who lives nearby, said she was at home when a friend arrived and asked her to call 911 because a woman at Union and Wabada had been threatened with a gun. After calling police, Tolen went down to the corner, she said.

She said she saw two teen girls in a violent fight outside a small grocery on Union, and a boy nearby who was holding a gun. Tolen said she spoke to a woman who said she’d been threatened by the boy, and said the woman told her she was the mother of one of the girls involved in the fight.

Tolen, 42, tried to break up the fight and had her back to the boy when she heard gunshots. Her attention was on the girls and she said she didn’t know the police had arrived and didn’t hear them say anything. She turned to see an officer with his gun drawn and the teen on the ground.