New York corrections officer, Dion Middleton, has been charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a gun after killing a teenager playing with a water gun.
According to the New York Daily News, Raymond Chaluisant, 18, was having a water gun fight on a “90-degree” day. Chaluisant was found dead on July 21 with a water gun filled with soft beads that expand in water.
Middleton was walking to his girlfriend’s house and admitted to police that he didn’t “see a firearm.” He revealed, “[I] did not see a firearm…did not hear a firearm. And obviously, I wasn’t shot because I would be bleeding. I did not see a firearm at all.”
Chaluisant reportedly shot the correction officer with ‘Orbeez’ from his water gun. Allegedly in response to the pain, Middleton fired back at the Bronx native teen, hitting him in the jaw and fatally wounding him.
“I feel a stinging in my back to the point where I’m like, ‘Ow,’” Middleton recounted, “It was like there was some glass. It’s like shards of glass. He (the teen) gives some type of gesture. (I say) ‘What the f— are you doing?’ Because that s–t hurt.”
It’s been confirmed that the correction officer wasn’t hit by shards of glass but rather water pellets.
After the Bronx teen was shot, an unidentified friend from Yonkers drove him toward the hospital before someone decided to call 911 due to the severity of the teen’s wound. Jiraida Esquilin, the teen’s older sister, described that her brother was shot in the chin and later died at the hospital from his injuries.
The publication reported Middleton did not report the shooting. He instead fled the scene and later went to work, where he was eventually arrested.
Jiraida, 29, told the news outlet, “They were just having fun. It’s a new Nerf gun that shoots water. The whole neighborhood was having a water gun fight.”
She expressed that the entire family was heartbroken over the senseless killing, “I don’t know what to say anymore. It’s just heartbreaking. Everybody loved him. He had family and friends, people that cared about him.”
