Umut Tamaç was shot in the head on Tuesday in the popular tourist district of Kuşadası in the southwestern province of Aydın by a police officer who was detained following the incident, said the Aydın Governor’s Office.According to Mehmet Yaylacı, a local business owner who witnessed the incident, the police officer first fired at Tamaç’s legs and then shot him in the forehead despite all his and other witnesses’ pleas not to shoot. “The policeman cornered the boy. He first fired at his legs. The shots did not hit him. Then he hit him on the head with his gun. We did not know he was a police officer at the time. We begged him not to do it. He got the boy up and fired at his head. Six or seven policemen threatened us to stop us from testifying,” Yaylacı was quoted as saying by the Radikal daily on Thursday. Yaylacı owns the Yay-Tun Butchers located near where the incident took place.
Aydın Governor Hüseyin Avni Coş said there is currently a judicial investigation under way concerning the incident, but the police officer’s identity has not been disclosed to the media. Coş said the officer fired his gun during an altercation with Tamaç. “Police wanted to detain a man wanted by the Public Prosecutor’s Office. An officer fired his gun during the fray that occurred when the man, who had a knife, resisted police. The incident will be clarified after the witnesses testify. We will see if the allegations are true following the judicial investigation,” Coş said.
According to Yaylacı, who said he is going to testify before the prosecutors, Tamaç was defenseless and the police officer was threatening to kill him. “They were standing face-to-face on the street. The police officer was shouting, but the boy was not resisting or responding. He was scared and wanted to leave. The police officer did not let him go and said he would kill him. From the first moment I saw them, the police officer was holding a gun, but the boy did not have anything at his hands,” he asserted.
Yaylacı further stated that following the incident the police officer who shot Tamaç was taken away by his colleagues and the witnesses were threatened not to testify. He said the other witnesses backed down but he could not do the same. “I will definitely testify before the prosecutors. I have to. I cannot live with this, the police shooting [people]. The same thing could happen to us in the future,” he said.
Tamaç was sent to Aydın Adnan Menderes University Hospital’s intensive care unit and is in a critical condition. His older sister, Pınar Tamaç, said Tamaç has problems but that “it does not give policemen the right to shoot him in the head.” She confirmed that he is a drug addict and was earlier arrested for carrying an unregistered gun.
