Grief and anger engulfed the city of Utica, N.Y. after a police officer shot and killed Nyah Mway, a 13-year-old boy, on Friday night.

The Utica Police Department said the fatal shooting occurred amid a foot chase between Mway and three officers. The officers saw what they believed to be a handgun on Mway, according to a statement released by the department on Facebook. Mway, who graduated from middle school just two days earlier, was then tackled to the ground before an officer, later identified by police as Patrick Husnay, discharged his firearm. The weapon on Mway was later determined to be a pellet gun.

Efforts to contact relatives of Mway were unsuccessful, but on a GoFundMe page set up by his family he was remembered as “an outgoing kid who loved to be outside biking and playing.” The family said he was “a good kid” who “has never gotten in trouble with law enforcement before.”

Mway and his family came to the U.S. from Myanmar, also known as Burma, as Karen refugees over eight years ago, according to the GoFundMe page. Over the years, thousands of Karen refugees have settled in Utica to flee ethnic and religious persecution by the Myanmar government.

How the shooting unfolded

On Friday night, police officers patrolled the streets of West Utica to investigate a string of armed robberies in the area. The suspects were described as Asian males who carried a black firearm, police said.

Around 10 p.m., three officers stopped Mway and another 13-year-old boy outside on a street, believing the two boys fit the description of the robbery suspects, police said.

In body-camera footage released by law-enforcement, an officer asks to pat down Mway in search of a possible weapon, and Mway tries to run away. The officers followed.

In a statement, the police said the officers believed Mway was holding and pointing a firearm at the officers. In the body-camera footage, an officer yelled out “Gun!” and tackled Mway to the ground. Soon, all three officers appeared hovering over Mway. Roughly 15 seconds after the chase began, a shot was fired by police.

Screams from onlookers followed. One officer attempted to do chest compressions on Mway. He was later transported to Wynn Hospital where he died from his wounds.

Police said they recovered a replica of a Glock 17 Gen5 handgun with a detachable magazine on scene. It was later determined to be a pellet gun.

Police officers are put on administrative leave with pay

Utica Police identified the officers involved as Husnay, a six-year veteran of the Utica Police Department; Bryce Patterson, a four-year veteran; and Andrew Citriniti, who has been on the force for two-and-a-half years.

Police Chief Mark Williams said all three officers were put on administrative leave with pay.

Utica Police said an internal investigation has been launched. The New York State’s Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigations will also investigate if the shooting violated any state laws.

On Saturday, the Utica police department said in a statement, “Our thoughts are with our officers involved, and the family of the deceased juvenile.”

In a later statement on Saturday night, the department added, “It is our sincerest desire that at the conclusion of these investigations an impartial, fair, and thorough investigation will have been completed, giving answers to any remaining lingering questions.”

Response from the community

At a news conference on Saturday, Utica mayor Michael P. Galime said transparency will be a priority.

“What happened yesterday evening in our community is an event that has become all too familiar and routine, over and over and over again,” he said.

Troves of family, friends and community members attended the conference, expressing their anger, grief and disbelief to the situation.

On Saturday, hundreds also gathered for a vigil in honor of Mway, bringing flowers, balloons and candles.

“We won’t be satisfied until the murderers are put in jail,” said Mway’s older brother, The Daily Sentinel reported.

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Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and the poll-topping far-right parties of Austria and the Czech Republic have announced plans to form a new faction in the European parliament, pledging to end support for Ukraine and push for peace talks with Russia.

“Historians will decide in a few years’ time how important this day was — we think this is the day when European policy begins to change,” Orbán said on Sunday at a press conference in Vienna.

“The Brussels elite is resisting. They do not accept the decision of the European [voters]. They don’t want change, they want to hold on to the status quo. That is unacceptable. That is why this current joint group and platform is being created,” he said.

The announcement comes as negotiations to form political blocs enter their final days following European parliament elections in June in which far-right parties made gains across the continent.

The Patriots for Europe, as the proposed new alliance has dubbed itself, will need to sign up MEPs from at least four other EU member states by Thursday to become an official faction, unlocking additional funding, bargaining power and parliamentary leadership roles.

Its founding parties — Austria’s Freedom party (FPÖ), the Czech Republic’s ANO, which recently dropped out of the liberal Renew group, and Hungary’s Fidesz — already have 26 MEPs between them. A group needs at least 23 lawmakers from seven countries to be able to form.

“From this starting signal, all political forces who wish to do so and who want to join in our political and positive reform efforts are very welcome. And from what I have heard in the last few days, there will be more of them,” said FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl. 

FPÖ — which doubled its EU parliamentary seats and is on course to win the Austrian national election in September — is the organising force behind the alliance, which Kickl said was a “carrier rocket” for radical change in Brussels. 

The announcement marks a formal break between the FPÖ and France’s Rassemblement National, led by Marine Le Pen, in Europe. In the previous parliament the two sat in the Identity and Democracy (ID) group.

The RN is expected to emerge as France’s leading party in the first round of voting on Sunday in the country’s election. In Europe, the RN’s efforts to moderate its views in order to secure votes at home have slowly opened a rift with more hardline parties, however.

Le Pen forced the expulsion of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party from ID after its lead election candidate said not all Nazi SS soldiers were criminals. The exclusion was opposed by FPÖ.

Attitudes towards Russia have emerged as a crucial dividing line on the right, with ultraconservative parties such as Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy staunchly opposed to any rapprochement with Moscow over Ukraine.

However, the PiS party has not ruled out joining the new group. “We are observing developments,” said an official.

“We will not stand idly by and watch a European superstate develop in which the parliaments of the member states are reduced to a kind of folklore department,” said Kickl, calling for a more forthright agenda against Europe’s “radical centrism”. His opening remarks also contained numerous reference to “peace” with Russia.

The FPÖ has a long history of close relations with President Vladimir Putin, and has been harshly critical of Ukraine since Russia began its full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022. 

Alongside Orbán and Kickl, ANO’s Andrej Babiš signed a “patriotic manifesto” that they have sent to other far-right parties in Europe as the founding text of the proposed new faction.

“We are here together because we are united by three main priorities that will define our policies in the EU. The defence of sovereignty, the fight against illegal migration and the revision of the Green Deal [plan to combat climate change],” said Babis. 

One powerful potential member would be Germany’s AfD, which has 14 MEPs.

But Hungary’s Fidesz is opposed to teaming up with the German party, according to an AfD official. Leader Alice Weidel told the Financial Times she would keep her options open and not join a group just for the sake of joining.

Despite their increase in the number of seats, far-right parties do not seem on track to wield more power in the EU assembly as they are splintering into more groups than in the former parliament. Simon Hix, professor of politics at the European University Institute, said this development would increase the likelihood that the largest group, the centre-right European People’s party, will pivot to towards the centre and centre-left.

“We’re heading for the most fragmented parliament we’ve ever had. But the fragmentation on the far right will strengthen the centrist coalition, as the EPP will have nowhere else to go.”

For months before the first debate, the nation’s voters repeatedly expressed doubts over whether President Biden had the cognitive health enough to serve. 

Today, those doubts have grown even more: now at nearly three-quarters of the electorate, and now including many within his own party.

And today, after the debate with former President Trump, an increased number of voters, including many Democrats, don’t think Mr. Biden should be running for president at all. Nearly half his party doesn’t think he should now be the nominee.

(Trump, for his part, does better, but still only gets half the electorate thinking he has the cognitive health to serve.)

The move came across the partisan board, but it includes a double-digit movement among Democrats, and movement among independents.

Given that, today nearly three in four voters also don’t think Mr. Biden should be running for president in the first place. That’s a higher-percentage sentiment than in February, when almost two-thirds said he should not run.

Most voters who say he shouldn’t run say it’s both about his campaigning and his effectiveness in office, along with his age.

But Democrats’ concerns, when expressed, lean more toward the strategic. They are worried more about his ability to campaign than his decision-making as president.

Trump, by contrast, finds a wide view among Republicans that he should be running. 

That comes as voters widely believe that in the debate, Trump presented his ideas more clearly, appeared more presidential, inspired more confidence, explained his policies better and —quite simply — won the debate. 

This is the case, despite the fact that voters overall think Trump was not as truthful.

And it’s relative, of course. There are plenty of voters who think neither candidate did well.

These views are very similar whether people watched the debate live or just watched highlights or coverage about it, which may speak more generally to the way people get and process information in the modern era.

And Mr. Biden has made no meaningful inroads on convincing voters that a second term would make them financially better off: Trump still is seen as better on this measure.

Nor has Mr. Biden cast himself as better than Donald Trump at protecting democracy.

What now?

After the debate, some Democratic officials reportedly said Joe Biden should step aside as the nominee and give another Democrat a chance to run for president in 2024.

That idea finds resonance with nearly half the nation’s rank-and-file Democrats. 

That’s related to perceptions of Mr. Biden’s health: Democrats who don’t think Mr. Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve are more likely to say he shouldn’t be the nominee.

And that former number has increased among Democrats. (It’s also gone up among independents.)

The debate has brought the presidential race front and center to the minds of registered voters. Now 59% of registered voters say they are thinking a lot about the presidential race, up from 48% just a few days ago. Interest has risen among Democrats and Republicans alike.

This CBS News/YouGov survey is based on a national sample of 1,130 registered voters who were contacted between June 28-29, 2024. All respondents participated in an earlier national survey of 1,881 registered voters fielded June 17-21, 2024. The sample was weighted by gender, age, race, and education, based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as past vote and partisan identification and weighted to account for differential response rates. The margin of error for the sample of registered voters is ±4.2  points.