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LEWISTON — A 14-year-old local boy playing with a toy gun found himself facing a real — and loaded — shotgun aimed at him by police Monday night.

The boy, whose family asked that his first name not be published, was playing with a new Christmas present, an airsoft rifle, with friends shortly before 9 p.m. in a small lot at Mollison Way and Main Street.

According to Jessica Lavoie, the boy’s mother, what her son didn’t know was that someone had called police to report “two men carrying guns.”

Police responded and ordered the boys at gunpoint to “Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!” the boy said.

“It was pretty scary,” he said.

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The boy said he and his friend had approached an officer parked nearby in an effort to show him that their guns were not real. The other teens they had been playing with were hiding and didn’t know police had converged on the area.

As Lavoie’s son approached the officer, he swung the barrel of the fake rifle from an up position to pointing at the ground. As he did that, the officer thought he was aiming it at him.

“He got out of his car and took his shotgun out and loaded it,” the boy said.

The officer stood behind his cruiser and began yelling at the boy and his friend to put their guns down.

After they complied, the officer told them to walk toward them, turn around and kneel on the ground. The boys were handcuffed.

Meanwhile, a dozen other cruisers had arrived to back up the officer at the scene.

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The officer confirmed the boys’ guns were toys, then removed the handcuffs and returned the toy guns to the two boys.

Lavoie’s son said the officer at the scene told the boys that it’s fine to play with guns, but the next time a similar circumstance occurs and a police officer approaches, they should put their toy guns down immediately or keep them slung over their shoulders so the officer won’t feel threatened. 

“I’m not upset with the police at all,” Jessica Lavoie said. “They did what they had to do. It’s just not safe, obviously. The officers really only have, potentially, a few seconds to decide what they are going to do.”

Lewiston police could not be reached for comment.

Lavoie’s son has agreed not to use the toy gun in a public area of the city and instead confine his activities with the toy gun to target practice in the family’s backyard on Elliott Street, his mother said.

Jessica Lavoie decided to contact local media about the incident after she was driving to work Tuesday morning and heard on her car radio about a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland who had been shot and killed by police while playing with an airsoft gun. The guns, which shoot plastic pellets, come equipped with an orange tip, in order to help distinguish the toy from real firearms. In the case of the Cleveland shooting, the orange tip was missing from the toy gun. The toy rifle belonging to Lavoie’s son has an orange tip.

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Lavoie said she hoped that her son’s near-tragic experience raises awareness in the community of the potential dangers of children playing with toy guns in public and, by doing so, avert a tragedy.

“We hear about it in other places and it could have happened last night here with my son,” she said.

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