Could it be a man-sized 12 year old? They’re out there. And on the other hand, there are diminutive fully-grown men (even midgets) that would kill you in a heartbeat.
There are airsoft (plastic BB) guns out there that are convincing replicas of real firearms, and a little doctoring to remove the orange ends renders them a convincing facsimile of the real thing--especially at a distance, especially pumped with adrenalin from getting a call of 'man with a gun'.
I would have to see the item in question before I could make a call of a foul shoot, and it would have to be obviously NOT a weapon. (and that's not going into people who might paint the tips of their weapons orange to make them look like toys).
Yeah, it could be that.
Over on another website, I read an article about a 12 year old girl gone missing from school. Among the various details about her, she is described as being 5’4’ and weighing 161 lbs. Okay, probably a statistical outlier for 12 year olds, but they definitely can be adult sized. And even if more normal sized, criminal culture is trying to recruit significantly underaged members because our justice system is only now slowly changing its views against harshly punishing child criminals. As I’m sure you know, a 12 year old murderer faces a much shorter sentence under much better conditions than an adult.
As for the “it’s just a toy gun” comments being made in other posts, a visit to any Wal-Mart sporting goods department will reveal BB and AirSoft pistols and rifles with moulded plastic frames that look exactly like Berettas and tricked out M-16s EXCEPT they have a red plastic tip at the end of the muzzle. That tip can easily be painted and/or removed to make the “toy” look exactly like a weapon.
The modern pellet and BB handguns fire a projectile at about 600fps. It’s almost a .22 short. My pellet rifle fires at 1200fps which is about the same as a .22LR.
There is no orange warning tip on them because THEY ARE A REAL AND DANGEROUS WEAPON.