POLICE have revealed a woman who was shot by armed officers after she appeared to wave a weapon in her garden had been brandishing a toy gun.
As previously reported in the Echo, the 49-year-old was shot in the arm with a baton gun, which fires plastic bullets, to disarm her.
The woman had earlier threatened to harm herself.

Powered by a large spring inside its mostly clear casing, the toy gun used in a shooting incident at Barracks Road Shopping Center in December couldn’t be mistaken for a real firearm in daylight.
However, a judge ruled Thursday that the Charlottesville area’s problem with real guns has made people afraid.

Look-a-like toys or BB guns used to commit crimes always has been rare, and more so following federal laws in the late 1980s and early 1990s that restricted their appearance. But police still get sporadic calls of alleged gun play in neighborhoods, someone pointing a "real" gun out of a car window, or even robbing a bank.

PHOENIX -- Authorities say a Phoenix police officer shot a teen after the suspect simulated pulling out a weapon and pointing it at the officer during a drug bust Friday night. According to Phoenix police Sgt. Tommy Thompson, the 15-year-old male's injuries were not life-threatening.

Police fired a Taser at a man after he walked along one of Darwin's busiest streets allegedly pointing a toy pistol at people. Superintendent Bob Harrison says officers donned protective gear on Mitchell Street yesterday afternoon amid fears the toy might be a real weapon.

DOCTORS yesterday called for a ban on the sale of toy guns, saying they were dangerous for children to play with.
The warning follows an incident in which a seven-year-old Bahraini from Manama accidentally shot himself in the eye when he was playing with one such "weapon" his parents had bought him from a cold store.

Mphumuti Nkambule and his co-accused, were represented by attorney M.S Simelane who told Senior Magistrate David Khumalo that, “the accused persons were not carrying a gun but a toy gun on the day in question,” he said.
Magistrate Khumalo told Simelane that he must mind his words because what he was telling the court was that his clients did committed the crime, however, they were not carrying a genuine firearm but a toy gun.