13-year-old accused of pointing gun outside probation office
ALBANY — The depth of Albany’s gun violence problem was on display at the Albany County probation office this week when two teenagers who had just visited the office, including one on probation for a prior gun conviction, were charged with possessing a loaded handgun.
One of the teens, who is 17 and lives on Delaware Avenue, is accused of handing the revolver to his 13-year-old friend once they left the office. The younger boy then allegedly used the gun to threaten at least two other boys that he had just encountered in the probation office, including one boy he had tried to fight moments earlier before they met with probation officers, according to police records and law enforcement sources.
That altercation began when the 13-year-old boy began taunting the other boy for wearing a shirt with a city of Troy school logo.
It marked the second time in less than three weeks that a teenager visiting Albany County’s probation office has been charged with carrying a loaded handgun. On June 21, an 18-yearold man was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and resisting arrest after police said he went to the South Pearl Street office to meet with a probation officer while carrying a loaded handgun.
The incident outside the probation office on Tuesday, which brought a wave of police to downtown Albany in the middle of the workday, took place less than four hours before a 21-yearold Albany man was killed in an unrelated execution-style shooting that occurred about two miles south of the probation office on Delaware Avenue.
And last week, six teenagers attending a Fourth of July party on Myrtle Avenue were shot and injured.
The mother of the boy with the Troy schools’ shirt told police that after she and her son left the probation office, the 13year-old was waiting across the street and pointing a handgun at them as they exited.
“Once I saw the kid pointing the gun at us, I got (my son) and we ran back into probation for help,” she told police. “There were two big white vans that were parked on the street in front of probation that provided us with cover and I think that is the only reason the kid didn’t shoot us. I was terrified for me and my son and thought this kid was going to shoot and kill us.”
Around that same time, a 15year-old boy who had also just left a visit with his probation officer said the younger boy, who had been “running his mouth” in the probation office, came at him and appeared to be armed with a handgun.
“I was walking down the street to my grandma’s car and I saw him across the street
standing in front of the pizza shop,” the 15-yearold later told detectives. “He started yelling things at me from across the street and I told him to come over so that we could fight. He started to walk across the street and he was grabbing on something in his waistband. I could see a black piece of plastic that appeared to be the handle of a gun hanging from his waist. When I saw this I got scared because I thought it was a gun that he might use to shoot me and backed up into my grandmother’s car.”
His grandmother called police as the younger boy and another teenager ran away. Both were subsequently arrested by police.
The incident, which was not announced by the Albany Police Department, took place as the city has been engulfed in an ongoing cycle of gun violence.
The 17-year-old boy arrested Tuesday was charged with criminal possession of a loaded firearm and criminal sale of a firearm to a minor. He appeared in Albany County Family Court following his arrest and has been sent to a secure detention facility, according to police sources. He was on probation for an arrest in August 2022, when he was 15, after police said he was carrying a loaded semiautomatic handgun when they arrested him for trespassing in a Western Avenue residence.
The 13-year-old also appeared in Family Court and police sources said he was sent to a detention facility.