Syracuse, N.Y. — Adut Mo started cooking at 8 a.m. Tuesday. It was a new dish, and a special dinner for the last night before her little brother, Lueth, started the new school year as a sophomore at Henninger High School.
The two ate together in the kitchen of the big yellow house on Syracuse’s North Side.
Their father, Domkog, was still working so he ate later. And then he promised his son they’d go back to school shopping after the first day was done.
Then everyone said good night.
Those were the last words they said to the 15-year-old.
Lueth never made it to school. He was shot and killed by an Onondaga County sheriff’s deputy early Wednesday morning. His family friend, 17-year-old Dhal Apet, was also killed.
They were in a stolen car in DeWitt that nearly ran over the deputy who responded to a call of suspicious activity, said Onondaga County Sheriff Toby Shelley. Shelley’s office said the evidence shows the deputy, who did not turn on his body-worn camera, had no choice but to shoot at the car. The boys were not driving; they were passengers. The driver has not been identified or found. Police and the families said the driver sped from the scene and ditched the car, with the two dying boys in it. Someone who has not been identified called 911.
The fathers and sisters of both teens spoke at length with reporters from Syracuse.com and The Post-Standard Thursday at Lueth’s home. The families, from the same town in South Sudan, have been friends since before the boys were born. Both children were born in the U.S.
They come from large families where home is a revolving door because someone is always going to work and coming home from work, regardless of the time of day.
Both families said the teens had recently started hanging out with friends who concerned them.
Lueth’s father said he recently forbade his son from being with friends who were staying out too late and getting into trouble. Dhal’s father and sister said he, too, had some friends the family did not like.
But neither boy had ever been in serious trouble, the families said. And neither was ever involved in anything violent.
Mostly, the families said, they were normal teenage boys who made bad choices sometimes, but nothing that ever would have foreshadowed their deaths in a police shooting.
“They did not deserve to die,” Ajak Apet said.
The families that came to Syracuse from a war-torn country to build better lives are searching for answers as hard as they are grieving. The sheriff’s office has told them very little.
A first day that never came
Lueth’s father went into his room around 6:30 a.m., before he got in his car to take a family friend to school. That family lives too far for the daughter to walk, so Domkog drives her. Sometimes, Lueth comes, but sometimes he walks. Domkog figured his son was walking to Henninger.
He left to take the other child to school. When he returned, there was a crime scene just down the street on Mooney Avenue. He was curious but not worried.
What he didn’t know was his son Lueth was there, dying in the stolen car. His family friend’s son Dhal was already dead. The driver, likely a friend of the boys, ditched the car. Police have not identified the driver and he has not been found.
Around 9 a.m., Adut got a text saying the boys were missing. Then a call with more specific news: They were dead.
Adut and Domkog ran down their street to the crime scene. They tried to see, to ask questions. They waited for two hours but got no information. So they went to the hospital.
There they learned it was all true. Lueth had been shot and killed. He was pronounced dead after they brought him in. By the time they got there, his body had been taken to the medical examiner’s office, they said.
The boy who had once wanted to be a police officer, who geeked out playing Fortnite with a light-up keyboard, was gone.
In the void were so many questions. Adut spent her afternoon trying to piece together her brother’s last hours from media reports.
Dhal’s sister, Ajak Apet, and their father, Pothwei Bangoshoth, went down to the crime scene after they heard the news of his death from a friend. They stood there for hours. They could see there was a body there; he was sure it was his son. But no one would confirm it.
Deputies would not tell them what had happened.
Pothwei and Ajak said Dhal had been running with people who made them worry lately. And he stopped making the artful videos that he used to spend hours perfecting.
He was not perfect, but he was a generous kid who was growing up.
Until this school year, Pothwei worked in Henninger. He knew his son’s friends and their teachers. He sat in on a disciplinary chat with Dhal and the gym teacher last year. Dhal had been mouthing off, his father said. The gym teacher and his father told him it had better not happen again.
The teen apologized and smiled sheepishly when he got up to leave. He was a kid who wanted criticism when he had done wrong, his father said.
“When I think about that smile, I cry,” Pothwei said.
Onondaga County sheriffs at the scene of a shooting on Mooney Ave in Syracuse. Sept 6, 2023. Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com.
Families overwhelmed by questions
More than 24 hours after the boys’ deaths, the families want to know how the injured boys got over to the Mooney Avenue scene – just a block away from Lueth’s home – and whether the deputy was searching for the boys he had just fired at.
The sheriff’s office said the shooting was part of a string of events that began Tuesday night around 9 p.m. That’s when two cars, a Hyundai and a Kia, were stolen near James and Hixson Avenue in Syracuse.
Those cars were connected to two smoke shop burglaries: one at 4 a.m. in the city of Oneida and one at a smoke shop in DeWitt. The cars were spotted again by a 911 caller at 6:18 a.m., who called to say there were suspicious people in the Midler Meadows Mobile Home Park. That’s where the Hyundai drove at the deputy, the sheriff said, and where the deputy fired into the car and hit the two boys.
The car fled and eventually crashed on Mooney Avenue just before 7 a.m. one block away from Lueth’s home.
Ajak also asked why the passengers were hit by the bullets, when they had no control over where the car was going.
Like many others, the families also want to know why the deputy did not turn on his body camera as soon as he arrived at the call in DeWitt. Pothwei said that if the deputy was on duty answering a call, he should have turned it on before the interaction began.
“Why wasn’t that turned on while he was on duty?” Pothwei said.
Pothwei also wants to know why the deputy could shoot at all of the teens if they were not armed.
The families also don’t know who called 911 on Mooney Avenue to report the boys had been shot long after the shots were fired in DeWitt.
As they sit on the steamy porch of Leuth’s home on Mooney Avenue, family and friends stream in and out of the door to pay respects, to bring food, and to wonder. They know so little, the questions are endless:
Are the boys being blamed for the burglaries? What about the other car police mentioned?
But more than anything, perhaps, they want to know why their sons were shot in the DeWitt mobile home park. What happened between the 911 call for suspicious people and the deputy firing three shots at the car?
The sheriff said the department has video from a nearby homeowner that shows the car driving toward the officer. The video justifies the fatal shots the deputy fired, the sheriff said. But he has not made the footage public.
Ajak and Adut, both in their 20s, have been trying to defend their brothers and families against the vitriol on social media.
Ajak said that no one knows for sure what role her brother and Leuth played in the events over the 10 hours from the car theft to the shooting.
Now the boys will never have a chance to defend themselves or their actions that day, they said.
“Nothing justifies anybody (getting) killed,” Adut said.
Pothwei, who grew up in South Sudan and came to Syracuse when he was in his 30s, said it is hard to know what he needed to protect his son from. He quit his job this year to stay home and be around more for his kids.
He handed in his keys the day before his son was killed.
More Syracuse.com coverage
State Attorney General opens investigation into teens fatally shot by deputy in DeWitt
See sheriff’s explanation of why deputy fired shots that killed two teens (Video)
2 teens killed in DeWitt by deputy who fired at vehicle which nearly ran deputy over, sheriff says
Two people killed by police in shooting in DeWitt, authorities say
Two teens fatally shot by deputy identified; they attended Henninger High School
Staff writer Anne Hayes covers breaking news, crime and public safety. You can reach her at ahayes@syracuse.com.
Marnie Eisenstadt writes about people and public affairs in Central New York. Contact her anytime email | Twitter| Facebook | 315-470-2246.
Staff Reporter Rylee Kirk contributed to this report.