‘My son Nyah was a good boy:’ Utica’s refugee community continues to grieve teen’s death

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH 

Nyah Mway’s framed eighth grade graduation certificate sits at the side entrance of the Buddha Dama Thuka Temple, propped above a party speaker that emits colorful lights. This was the Mway family’s parish, where Nyah danced and played pool on the weekends with other teenagers.

Nyah graduated from Donovan Middle School on June 27, 2024. The next day, Utica Police Department Officer Patrick Husnay shot him in the street, a single bullet to the chest.

In the year since, Utica’s tight-knit Karen (pronounced Kah-REN) community of immigrants from Myanmar, and local activists say they are still fighting for justice. On June 25, his family filed a civil suit against the city and Husnay, asking for compensatory and punitive damages.

The lawsuit alleged excessive force used by Husnay in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments; assault and battery; and reckless hiring, training and supervision by the city of Utica. The lawsuit alleged that because Nyah was already restrained, having been tackled by another officer who was still punching him, Husnay’s “acts were beyond the scope of their jurisdiction, without authority of law, and in abuse of their powers.” The lawsuit alleged “misconduct” and “abuse of authority,” as well as alleging that Husnay “used unreasonable and excessive force against Nyah Mway.” The civil suit does not specify how much money the family is seeking.

Lawyers representing the city of Utica and Husnay filed a July 31 request to dismiss the family’s lawsuit because the family failed to “state a cause of action.”

The request outlined eight arguments, including that, according to the body camera footage of the involved officers, Husnay’s actions were justifiable and that the court should dismiss the excessive force claim. The response also stated that Husnay, as a government official, is entitled to qualified immunity and should have the family’s “state law excessive force, assault and battery claims” dismissed.

“This is a real tragedy, and we really want to help the family obtain some semblance of justice,” Julia P. Kuan, an attorney with the firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, which is representing the family, said in a recent interview. “No parent would ever want this to happen to their child. But because this has happened, we don’t want them to feel like they didn’t fight for some sort of justice.”

The civil suit comes more than three months after the state declined to bring charges against the officer involved in the shooting; state Attorney General Letitia James’ office explained in an April 2 press release “a prosecutor would not be able to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt” that Husnay’s actions were unjustifiable under New York state law.

Nyah’s case is among the 127 investigations the state attorney general’s office has conducted in which no officer was charged in the past 10 years, when the office took over investigations into police shooting deaths.

Through his lawyer, Husnay declined to be interviewed by the attorney general’s Office of Special Investigations, which relied on a review of his body camera footage and the testimony of other officers for its report, in addition to civilian cellphone video.

“The police have become so overly militarized and they deal with civilians like their enemy combatants, even children,” Kuan said. “I wonder if that boy, if Nyah, looked like one of their sons, would they have treated him the same way?”

The Utica Police Department said it could not comment on the case, and the Utica corporation counsel also declined to comment for this story.

“My son Nyah was a good boy”

Nyah was born on Aug. 8, 2010, in a refugee camp near the border of Thailand and Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The Karen population, an ethnic minority in Myanmar, speak Karenic languages and practice different faiths. Many are Christian and some are Buddhists, as Nyah’s family is. The family spent 10 years in a refugee camp before coming to America in 2015, fleeing genocide, ethnic cleansing and war.

Nearly all of Utica’s Karen population has come from such refugee camps along Thailand’s border with the help of a previous U.S. State Department resettlement program. Nyah’s family came to America through a program run by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said Chris Sunderlin, a Utica-based organizer who has worked closely with many immigrant families over the years, including the Mway family.

In Utica, Nyah blossomed. He always told his mom that he loved her when he returned home from school, was respectful of his older family members and deeply loved his three siblings. He wanted to be a doctor and help others, especially one of his two older brothers, who suffered a leg injury in the refugee camp.

Nyah enjoyed some of the same things as other American children: eating noodles, drawing, watching anime, playing online games and basketball, and having sleepovers with friends. He was especially close to his sister, his family said. When he got home, the first thing he would do was ask where she was.

“My son Nyah was a good boy, a wonderful son with a bright future. I love him and miss him, and I cry every day thinking about my beautiful boy,” Chee War, Nyah’s mother, said in a press release announcing the filing of the civil suit.

Lay Htoo, Nyah’s cousin, said: “Nyah Mway is not that type of kid that go out, cause the trouble, go fight with other people.”

“Hands out of your pockets”

Utica Police Department Officer Bryce Patterson initially stopped Nyah, who was walking alongside his friend, another 13-year-old boy riding a bicycle.

“Hands out of your pockets,” Patterson said to Nyah when he stopped them at 10:18 p.m. for “riding in the roadway,” according to body camera footage released by the Utica Police Department. He complied.

Patterson asked Nyah if he could pat him down for weapons. The boy took off running. During the pursuit, Nyah pointed an object – later revealed to be a pellet gun designed to look like a Glock 17 Gen5 handgun – at Patterson, according to his interview with the state attorney general’s office.

The shooting, captured by a bystander and posted to Facebook, showed Nyah running up the dark residential street, the red and blue lights of parked police cars blurring into blots of purple on the homes in front of him.

In the bystander video, Patterson closes in on the boy in seconds, with Husnay behind him. Nyah turns. Patterson shouts that Nyah has a gun.

Nyah, who weighed 111 pounds, landed on his back with Patterson on top of him, body camera footage and the bystander video showed. Patterson punched Nyah twice in the jaw. As Patterson wound up to strike Nyah again, Husnay caught up. He shot Nyah in the chest at close range, according to records from the attorney general’s office.

It was 10:19 p.m. 

“What the fuck, did he shoot?” Patterson asked.

Nyah rolled into a fetal position, flipped on his right side and lied still, the pellet gun in the grass inches away from him.

“I don’t know if he shot me,” Patterson said to another officer.

Patterson applied a chest seal to Nyah and began CPR at 10:20 p.m., police investigative documents reviewed by the Investigative Reporting Workshop and City & State showed. The department notified Wynn Hospital of the shooting at 10:28 p.m. Nyah was transported there and pronounced dead at 10:45 p.m.

Utica Police Department Chief Mark Williams would say in a press conference 12 hours after the incident, with an interpreter relaying his words in Karen to an outraged crowd, that the department would “meet deadly physical force with deadly physical force,” regardless of whether the handgun was real or not.

The state attorney general’s investigation added the boys matched the description of suspects in armed robbery incidents that occurred on June 12 and June 27, 2024.

And in their initial contact with the Mway family, around 2:30 a.m., the police erroneously told them their son had been involved in a shootout, according to Sunderlin. “The family, even when they thought he was shooting at the police, they were sad, of course. What’s he gotten himself into? When they first translated, they said he was in a firefight with police,” Sunderlin added.

“They come from a war-torn country where they had to honor the militia ... understanding the family is a pro-police family. They had the trust in them here, and then every action since has completely eroded it,” he said.

After the shooting, officers showed up several times to the Mway home unannounced and with no interpreter, Sunderlin said. His mother was alone in the house on one occasion and was terrified. She hid as the officers looked in every window.

The department also shined fog lights into the family’s windows, Sunderlin said, and plainclothed officers attended the boy’s funeral, despite the family requesting that local law enforcement not be present.

Husnay’s record

Husnay was hired by the city of Utica as a police officer on May 17, 2018. His 2019 performance evaluation report describes an officer who had not yet mastered police work, receiving a rating of “needs improvement” in a majority of the duty performance categories. “Officer Husnay needs to improve his command presence while on scene of volatile situations,” according to the evaluation. “Officer Husnay has to work on his work quality and reliability, both of these traits should improve with more experience on the job.”

Nothing in the records, which, like other officers’ records, were publicly available on the department’s website until Jan. 23, 2025, documents an improvement plan. A public records request for Husnay’s personnel files since 2020 was denied, so it’s unclear whether Husnay’s performance has gotten better since that evaluation.

The available records also detail five use-of-force incidents involving Husnay, with four of them occurring in October 2019 on Oct. 6, Oct. 19, Oct. 24 and Oct. 31. The fifth incident occurred on Jan. 4, 2020, when Husnay and another officer restrained a fleeing woman driver wanted for possible grand larceny.

Two of Husnay’s use-of-force incidents involved breaking up disputes between two people. Another involved a person in a holding cell grabbing Husnay by his shirt collar, personnel records indicate. Another officer was present in the holding cell, and they took the prisoner to the ground.

Husnay’s fourth use-of-force incident occurred after he used a “come along” hold to pull a man he was arresting into the back of a police car. After the man entered the car, “all force stopped,” and he stated he was not injured.

Why did he run?

The facts of the Utica case are similar to those of other fatal police shootings that have commanded national attention in recent years.

In 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was fatally shot in Cleveland, Ohio, while playing with what turned out to be a BB gun in a park. It was one of several cases that elevated the discourse around systemic overpolicing and how quickly police can react with violence.

Utica’s Karen elders, many of whom fought in their native country, can’t understand why officers killed Nyah. Community advocates say the police department has failed to engage with the city’s shifting and diversifying residents.

“They literally can’t comprehend how the people that are supposed to be saving us and keeping us secure shot and killed a child that was running away,” Sunderlin said.

“It makes sense to me that a kid would run because there’s no trust,” said Nicole Roberts, an Oneida County resident.

She lives in New Hartford, about a 10-minute drive from Nyah’s neighborhood in Cornhill, across the Utica-New Hartford border.

In New Hartford, the median household income is $78,950, nearly half of its residents hold a bachelor’s degree and the population is slightly more than 90% white. The homes are freshly painted. The roads are smooth. There aren’t as many sagging power lines.

In Utica, the median household income is $51,513, about 21% of its residents hold a bachelor’s degree and 57% of the population is white. Almost 28% of Utica’s population lives in poverty, compared to just 14% of New York state residents.

Roberts teaches English as a second language in several Oneida County school districts and is aware of the disconnect between poorer parts of the city and others who live, as she does, in wealthier neighborhoods.

People in her self-described isolated suburb don’t speak about Nyah’s killing. “We’re not talking about this anymore,” she said. “It’s long forgotten, sadly.”

If Roberts’ son, Joey, who her 16-year-old daughter, Arianna, described as “skinny and white,” found himself in the same situation as Nyah, “it’s unfathomable that the outcome could be death,” Roberts said.

In Cornhill, which has a 50% poverty rate and has seen an increase in gun violence and a declining population, the sidewalks are cracked and uneven. The roads are old and littered with potholes.

“Utica grew so quickly that we had these bands of beautiful houses throughout the whole city,” Sunderlin said, gesturing to a row of homes as he drove a reporter downtown in the spring. “It was growing so quickly in the late 1800s that they said it was going to be the largest city in the world.”

But now, like many other Rust Belt cities, Utica has struggled. By the 1990s, arson consumed many of the city’s abandoned homes, and it wasn’t until the arrival of Bosnian immigrants – and later a surge of refugees from Myanmar – that Utica was on the upswing again.

Today, about 22% of Utica’s residents are foreign-born, according to The Center, a Utica-based organization that resettled over 16,500 refugees, primarily those fleeing genocide and civil war. The Center provides translation services, employment assistance and access to health care during an immigrant’s first 90 days.

But both the transition to Utica and day-to-day living can still be difficult. “Black and brown kids in this community are literally saying, ‘There is no heaven because where I’m living right now is hell,’ said Kay Klo, executive director of the Midtown Utica Community Center. “That’s a reality for a lot of poor Black and brown kids that are growing up in these very poor communities.”

Most police officers also lack the language skills to communicate with the Karen residents, community members said. When tragedies such as Nyah’s killing occur, and officials attempt to communicate the gravity of the situation, the effort often falls short.

Utica Codes Enforcement Commissioner Marques Phillips – who leads a local department that enforces the state Building and Property Maintenance Code – said, on a broader level, people can usually tell if the officer communicating with them came from the same neighborhood.

“When we’re communicating with the public, I think it’s important that we communicate with people that grew up on the streets they’re talking about and (with) the populations they’re talking about,” said Phillips, who also led police reform efforts for the city after George Floyd’s murder.

Klo immigrated to Utica with her family in 2004 after they fled the civil war in Myanmar. Her parents work in a Chobani yogurt factory, a company founded by a Turkish immigrant that trains and employs large immigrant and refugee populations. The factory is about an hour away from the city.

Klo heard about the shooting from her sister, who is a friend of Nyah’s brother, around 6 a.m., the day after the shooting. “Our community is small,” Klo said in a September 2024 interview. “All the Karen people know each other.”

She serves on Justice for Nyah’s organizing team, a community-led effort with a list of several demands, including the establishment of a police accountability board, a redirection of the police department’s funding toward programs that reduce community-based violence and the firing of Husnay, who shot and killed Nyah.

“When everything happened, I was that person that everybody knew, and they were like, ‘Go to Kay for help,’ ” Klo said. “I’ve been trying to figure out where the gaps are, where the needs are, where the resources are and trying to figure out who needs that support, especially the family.”

All involved officers were placed on administrative leave without pay until further notice, Williams said at the June 29, 2024, press conference.

All three officers who were on the scene when Nyah and his friend were stopped received honorable service awards on May 15, 2025, according to a police department Facebook post. Patterson, in addition to receiving an honorable service award, received a unit citation as part of a recognition for the Mobile Field Force.

In the year since the shooting, the police department briefed the public with a video. And in April, Lt. Michael Curley, the public information officer for the Utica Police Department, told WKTV, “a 13-year-old boy lost his life. We understand how the community feels about that. … It has been our goal, every day, to repair those relationships and build stronger bonds.”

But many in the community interviewed said the police department has painted a narrow picture of a troubled kid who was carrying a gun in describing the incident from a year ago. And when the department released its initial report into Nyah’s death, Cornerstone Community Church Pastor Mike Ballman was surprised.

Ballman lives on the street where one of the earlier robberies occurred. He said Detective Jacob Penree asked him to provide footage from their home security system because the perpetrators would have run in front of their house. Ballman sent the footage to the department on June 14, 2024. “The officer also said they were looking for two Black youths,” Ballman said in interviews in April and again in July.

But when the department released its incident report and said the robbery suspects were two Asian males, Ballman was confused. He said the video showed the robbers “were not the same sizes or wearing the same clothes” as Nyah and his friend.

Ballman said the department’s inability to acknowledge its mistakes means it is difficult to make amends with the community’s Karen population.

“They say they’re trying to repair relationships with the Karen community, but how can you repair a relationship with the Karen community when you vilify Nyah Mway and then you put the police that were involved in his death back out on the street?” he said. “I can’t see how the Karen community could feel safe at all.”

The months that followed the shooting were traumatic for the family, especially for Chee War, his mom. During the few hours that she can sleep, she told Sunderlin that she dreams of her dead son. Nyah tells her that he needs his justice, that he can’t go anywhere until then.

On the recent anniversary of Nyah’s death, “We brought a cake over to the house,” Sunderlin, a former teacher, said, and one of Nyah’s older brothers, Maung, was handing out slices. “And then he goes and takes his piece and puts it on the family shrine to Nyah Mway. So Nyah Mway is with him every minute of every day,” Sunderlin said.