Last Thursday night, four teens rolled up to the parking lot of an Ohio school started by NBA star LeBron James’s foundation and fired a toy water gun at a group playing basketball there. A fight ensued.
Police in Akron, Ohio, are investigating what they say was a deadly beating.
“Ethan Liming lost his life in a senseless act of violence,” Akron Police Chief Stephen Mylett said at a news conference Wednesday, adding that Liming “did not deserve to die.”
Mylett declined to name suspects but noted that investigators have “viable leads into the individuals that may have been involved” in the crime.
Liming had just finished his junior year at Firestone Community Learning Center, a public school in Akron, where he played baseball and football and was a member of the school’s academy of design, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.
“Ethan was everything. He was a good boy. He was a smart boy. He loved life. He loved living life. He wanted to be friends with everybody,” Liming’s mother, Jennifer, told WEWS, adding: “I just miss him so much. And I just wish he was here.”
At the time of the altercation, I Promise School was closed for the summer, with its last class held on May 25, the Beacon reported. The school was founded in 2018 as a partnership between the LeBron James Family Foundation and Akron Public Schools, providing a “STEM-focused and trauma-informed curriculum.”
Mark Williamson, spokesman for Akron Public Schools, said I Promise’s oldest students are in the seventh grade and would be too young to be involved in the altercation.
The day after the incident, the LeBron James Family Foundation tweeted that its campus remains “safe and secure,” although it was “devastated to learn of the overnight incident that saw a life lost near our school.”
“We are grieving with our community over another senseless act of violence,” the foundation added.
James, who grew up in Akron, also addressed the subject on Twitter.
“Our condolences goes out to the family who lost a loved one!!” the basketball star tweeted. “[May] the heavens above watch over you during this tragedy! Pray for our community!”
Our condolences goes out to the family who lost a loved one!! My the heavens above watch over you during this tragedy! Pray for our community! 💚👑 https://t.co/bpq5qsoNfO
— LeBron James (@KingJames) June 3, 2022
On the night of June 2, Liming and three friends, all 17-year-old boys, were driving around Akron, firing a toy SplatRBall Water Bead Blaster gun at “objects and possibly unsuspecting people,” the Akron Police Department said in a statement.
Holding one version of the blaster at the news conference Wednesday, Mylett explained that small beads of water are loaded into the gun and explode “like a water balloon” when shot at someone, getting the person wet. He described it as a toy marketed to people 14 and older.
Around 10:40 p.m., Mylett explained, Liming and his friends pulled into the I Promise School parking lot near the basketball courts. When two people in Liming’s group of friends started firing the bead blaster at four people playing basketball on the courts, the basketball players ran away, and two people from Liming’s group ran “in their direction,” Mylett said, not specifying whether Liming was one of them.
Moments later, Mylett said, the two boys from Liming’s group trotted back to the car with the group of basketball players running behind them. In the parking lot, a “confrontation” occurred, in which Liming "is assaulted and a fight ensues,” Mylett said, adding that two of Liming’s friends also were assaulted.
Liming’s father, Bill, told WEWS that he spoke to a detective on the case who said Liming was in the car when the confrontation began and originally mistook the tense situation as a joke.
“Ethan still thought it was horseplay when he got out of the car and was trying to tell people, ‘It’s relaxed. It’s just a joke. It’s a joke.’ And the individuals didn’t like that,” Bill Liming told the station. “One individual attacked him. Ethan still tried to tell them it’s just a joke. And then another individual came up behind them, struck him in the head.”
When Ethan started fighting back, Bill Liming said, “a third individual came up behind him and they overwhelmed them and they knocked him out on the ground.”
Police arrived at the parking lot around 10:50 p.m. and found Liming unresponsive on the ground, Mylett said. Paramedics declared him dead at the scene. The bead blaster was recovered at the scene, according to the police department. Mylett noted that it was “of concern” that the basketball players may have mistaken the toy for a real gun.
Bill Liming told WEWS that his son and his friends were “just goofing around being teenagers.”
“My son should not be murdered … brutally murdered and beaten to death because of a toy,” Liming added. “It makes me sick. It makes me sick. To know that my son’s life was lost because of that.”
