The person killed after pointing a gun at a Spokane police officer Saturday afternoon was tentatively identified Sunday as Eagle Michael, 15, a Coeur d'Alene Tribe member from Worley, Idaho. Michael was holding only a BB gun and was hearing-impaired, according to family members and the three people who were with him.

The ninth-grader, who wore a blue hearing aid, attended the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind in Gooding, Idaho. His hearing was deteriorating, and he was attending the school to learn sign language, his aunt Norma Jean Louie said Sunday night.

A police news conference is planned for 10:30 a.m. today. "Preliminarily in the investigation, it appears the officer followed her training when someone points a gun at her and refuses to put it down," police spokesman Dick Cottam said Sunday night. Cottam wouldn't confirm reports that the boy's weapon was a BB gun.

Relatives gathered Sunday at the shooting site on the 2000 block of North Cincinnati Street. Two of the men who were with Michael when he was killed had returned to the site Sunday morning, laid flowers on the pavement and sang a traditional Indian song. The memorial grew throughout the day as mourners added a chair with a stuffed eagle toy, flowers, balloons, and an enlarged copy of Michael's student ID card.

"He was caring," said another aunt, Lovinia Alexander. "He liked to have fun, laugh and play."

As of Sunday night, the family still had not had the chance to identify the slain teen as Michael, Alexander's niece, Dixie Saxon Stensgar said. She said a detective and the police chaplain came by their house on East Cataldo Avenue on Saturday night and their description of the boy matched Michael's.

The police said an autopsy had to be completed before the family could make a positive identification today.

Saturday's incident began when an officer stopped four people on Cincinnati Street between Baldwin and Ermina avenues after reports that someone had stolen Keystone Ice beer from the Blimpies-Maid O'Clover convenience store at Hamilton Street and Baldwin Avenue at 4:30 p.m., said Police Capt. Glenn Winkey.

The officer ordered all four to sit on the curb. The three men interviewed Sunday said they complied, but Michael did not. Other witnesses at the scene of the shooting said the boy had a gun.

The officer retreated, police said, trying to keep the patrol car between herself and the suspect.

"Don't shoot, it's a BB gun," the three men said they told the officer.

But a witness to the shooting said Sunday he did not hear the men say their companion was carrying a BBgun.

Billy Blue Walrath had driven up to his home on Cincinnati during the confrontation. He said he saw the shooting from about 25 feet away.

"If it was a BBgun," Walrath said, "it sure looked like a 9 mm or .45. It was a big gun."

Walrath said the officer was yelling "put the gun down, put the gun down" as Michael bent down to pick up the beer.

"It looked like he was going to grab the beer and take off," Walrath said Sunday. "And she yelled at him a couple more times to put the gun down, and then she fired."

Walrath said Saturday that Michael had pointed his weapon at police, then turned toward bystanders before being shot once in the head. Several witnesses said they feared for their lives, police said.

Police have not released the officer's name. She was placed on administrative leave, as is required under department policy.

The shooting occurred outside the home of Shanna Whitaker, 2018 N. Cincinnati.

"The kids thought that their dad was home so they looked out the window just in time to see a cop with a gun and a kid with a gun," Whitaker said. The kids saw the officer shoot and kill Michael, she said.

Michael's three companions, all Indian transients, were taken into custody Saturday but released late Saturday night.

On Sunday morning, the three men, who declined to be identified, were drinking malt liquor and playing cards under the pavilion in Mission Park.

"She didn't have to do that," one of them said of the officer who shot Michael. "It was just a BB gun."

"He wasn't waving (the gun) around," another man said. "He was talking to us."

They said Michael asked them if they wanted a beer, but that they were not involved in the alleged shoplifting at Maid O'Clover.

A fourth transient, named Nick, who was playing cards with the others, said Michael pulled the BB gun on him last week at a transient camp by the Spokane River near Mission Park.

"Then he laughed and said it was just a BBgun," the man said.

"He was just a kid," one transient said in tears. "Kids do stupid things. She didn't have to shoot him."

Michael, the son of Blu'Ann Matt, of Worley, had attended Coeur d'Alene Tribal School in the eighth grade where he received awards last fall for the arts and sports. He also received a computer in 2001 from the St.Maries Elks in their annual giveaway.

Carl Peterson, director of student services with the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind, said Michael came to the school with a history of trouble and he had violent tendencies that were being ironed out.

Michael was sharp and discovered a passion for football. He was ready to play in his first game but never showed up.

"He didn't come back to school last week," Peterson said. "We were expecting him. We didn't know where he was, if he was sick or what happened."

Michael joined the small school last spring after the Coeur d'Alene tribal school had contacted the specialized school.

"We took him last spring. It sounded like he had a few scrapes, problems with the law," Peterson said.

He coached the maturing boy.

"We're not going to become violent or threatening to anybody," Peterson said he remembers saying to Michael.

"We saw tendencies of him doing that a little bit. We gave him time to cool off," he said.

"He's certainly one you didn't want to corner. You didn't want to show him there was no way out."

Another aunt, Dixie Stensgar, acknowledges that Michael had some history of run-ins with the law.

"I don't think it' was more than most kids," Stensgar said. "He was well-known. All the kids he grew up with were cousins and rough and tumbled together."

She was not sure how he ended up in the company of these other men drinking beer.

Michael came home to Worley on weekends and often visited his aunts and cousins in Spokane, Alexander said.

"The first thing he would do is give me a big bear hug," she said.

When he didn't come home Saturday night, she said, the family knew something was wrong. She said the family called juvenile detention and hospitals, but didn't find out what had happened until the police came to the house.

The incident is being investigated by the Spokane County Sheriff's Office, a standard procedure when a city police officer shoots a suspect.