A 13-year old boy with Asperger’s syndrome was shot at by the Salt Lake City police in US’ Utah after his mother called 911 for emergency responders to help hospitalise her son, The Washington Post reported.

Linden Cameron (13) from Utah’s Salt Lake City was experiencing a mental breakdown on Friday, so her mother Golda Barton dialed 911 to seek help. The police officers instead shot him repeatedly, leaving the boy in serious condition with injuries to his intestines, bladder, shoulder and ankles.

What happened on Friday?

 According to Barton, her son suffers severe separation anxiety and Friday was the first day she went back to work after almost a year. As Cameron suffered a mental breakdown, Barton called 911.

When police arrived, he was unarmed, Barton told the local media. He just had to be taken to a hospital. 

“He’s unarmed, he doesn’t have anything, he just gets mad and he starts yelling and screaming,” she said. “He’s a kid he’s trying to get attention, he doesn’t know how to regulate.”

But police told her to stay outside and within five minutes she heard them ordering her son to the ground. It was followed by a series of gunshots. 

Barton said after the shooting, her son was handcuffed and police couldn’t tell her whether he was dead.

“Why didn’t they Tase him? Why did they shoot him with a rubber bullet?” she asked on a local media channel. “You are big police officers with massive amounts of resources. Come on. Give me a break,” she said.

What did the police say?

In a briefing with reporters on Friday, a police spokesman suggested that officers believed the boy might have a weapon. Salt Lake City Police Sgt. Keith Horrocks said officers showed up at the house after reports about “a juvenile that was having a mental episode, a psychotic episode, that had made threats to some folks with a weapon.”

He said Cameron fled the house on foot, and that one officer then shot him.

No weapon was found at the scene. The police have handed the case to outside investigators. Horrocks has pledged to hold a full briefing on the findings within 10 days.

Also read: One dead after mass stabbing in Birmingham; UK police launch probe

Statement by Salt Lake City’s mayor

Salt Lake City’s mayor Erin Mendenhall has pledged a swift investigation into the incident. 

“No matter the circumstances, what happened on Friday night is a tragedy, and I expect this investigation to be handled swiftly and transparently for the sake of everyone involved,” she said in a statement to the Salt Lake Tribune.

The incident has taken place when the US has witnessed widespread protests over police brutality. Protests first broke out in May this year after George Floyd was killed in police custody at Minneapolis, Minnesota.