NEW HAVEN — The moon was shining over Westville Manor when the teen stood frozen about 10 feet from the police officer.

At first glance, he could see the officer’s eyes looking somewhat confused from his perspective. Less than a heartbeat later, the 17-year-old noticed the gun in the officer’s hand. It was pointed at him. Everything went blank.

“My mind just, I don’t know,” he said. “Everything just happened so fast, I couldn’t really think about much.”

It’s a feeling he said he will never forget.

Just over a week after his Sept. 27 arrest, the New Haven teen, who asked to remain unnamed because of his age, sat still on his living room chair as he recalled the events of that night.

It was after 9 p.m. that Tuesday and he was headed home from the nearby wooded area where he and other teens from the housing project had been playing paintball all afternoon. The teen didn’t hear any footsteps and was startled upon hearing the officer’s voice.

“I heard ‘yo’ so I stopped. I just immediately paused. My hoodie was opened up a little bit, that’s where I had the paintball gun,” he said.

He said the officer asked him “what’s that you have on you” and when he moved to put his arms up, the paintball gun dropped to the floor.

“He’s still pointing the gun at me, the gun is on the floor ... you see it’s a paintball gun, I wasn’t doing anything,” the teen thought in that moment.

He said the officer had the gun pointed “for a while” and then finally put it away.

“He slammed me immediately and as he slammed me and before I could look, the rest of the officers were running,” he said.

As the teen hit the floor, he said he felt another officer on him. He said he tried to put his hands behind his back but he couldn’t move his arms because an officer was grabbing him and what felt like four officers had their knees on his back.

“Now they’re saying I’m resisting, but I’m not resisting, I’m just trying to put my hands to my back and you guys are on me,” he said.

He spoke in a relaxed voice as he translated his memories into words.

“You watch the news about this type of stuff happening, you know young black men and police, and you never think it’s going to happen to you,” he said.

Police did not respond to multiple emails and calls for comment regarding the incident with the son of Martha Moore, 40, of New Haven. Police spokesman Officer David Hartman was out of the office.

But police have said the arrest was made as the city faced a dangerous “paintball gun war” in which teens are using devices that resemble real semi-automatic assault weapons. Hartman had said in a release that the situation was potentially deadly and had led to injuries, including a 10-year-old girl who was shot in the head with a paintball gun in Newhallville.

Hartman noted late last month that there had been an incident during which police drew their guns and aimed at a teen who was “armed” with one of the “fake guns” and an angry crowd circled the patrol car when they found out the gun was not real.

“Any officer who wouldn’t draw their weapon (in such a situation) and point it at someone regardless whether they are a teenager or an adult is a fool,” Hartman said during a press conference in September. “We’re also not going to tolerate people attacking police officers after it’s found out that the weapon was a facsimile weapon.”

Police had responded to several reported shootings, gunfire incidents and gun-possession calls and found paintball guns, facsimile firearms and BB guns were used. But 911 callers feared the guns were real.

Police confiscated three paintball guns as a result of one call about groups using “assault weapons” and Hartman said the weapons had a “disturbing resemblance” to assault weapons.

“The race is on to find those involved and punish them for the lesser offenses before lethal weapons become involved,” Hartman said in a release after the incident. “We do not want to respond to any shooting but the tragic shooting of a young man, armed with a fake gun, by someone defending themselves against a misconceived threat of deadly force is a particularly disturbing thought.”

But the teen’s mother was a bit more animated when she shared her side of the story, saying she believes the situation could have been handled differently by police.

“I just can’t believe this police officer had a gun pointed at my boy’s head,” Moore said. “They had him handcuffed. They never read him his rights. I just really think something needs to be done.”

But it’s not just the arrest itself that rankles Moore.

“Even after he was arrested, we were trying to talk to them (and) they were very rude, they were not answering my questions,” she said. “People need to be treated with respect and I just feel like they don’t treat us like human beings.”

Moore has cellphone footage of the aftermath of her son’s arrest, showing dozens of people from the housing project surrounding police cruisers, yelling at the officers, calling them racists and other vulgar names.

In the midst of the situation, Moore’s daughter, the teen’s older sister, can be seen asking the officers repeatedly “why was there a gun pointed at my brother’s head?”

One of the officers is seen responding, also appearing to be angry, admitting to pointing the gun at the teen and telling his sister to “get over it.”

“You want us to ‘get over’ the fact that a gun was pointed at my son?” said Martha Moore. “How do you tell someone that? How do you tell a mother that?

“Anything could have happened that night. I don’t even want to imagine what could have happened.”

Moore said while she believes there are many police officers who do their job well in New Haven, the events of that night show there is still a lot of work to be done to mend relationships between police and communities of color.

She said for the officer to respond by saying “get over it” shows the officer had no compassion for her son, even though the teen meant no harm.

She wants to see police and the community working together to solved the issues and hopes sharing her family’s story will help give people a new perspective.

“My son is a good kid. He goes to school. He works. He stays out of trouble,” she said. “We may live in the projects but what I see when I look out here is people trying to give their kids a better life and that’s what I’m doing for my son. We are people, too.”

The urgent warning from police about a street “paintball gun war” and the devices that resemble real semi-automatic assault weapons came a few days after the arrest.

During the press conference about the paintball guns, Hartman showcased one that was seized earlier that week. He held it up alongside a Colt AR patrol rifle used by New Haven police to show the guns are nearly identical in size, color and design.

The main difference between the appearance of the two guns is the rubber tube on the paintball gun that connects to a canister at the rear of the weapon, usually about the size of a water bottle.

However, Hartman said it is hard for police and others to make that distinction when the gun is held in a shooting position.

“It is important to know that, in this case, the compressed-air cartridge attached to the gun is tucked under and behind the arm of the person wielding the paint ball gun when it is positioned for firing,” Hartman said at the press conference.

Moore saw the photo of Hartman and said she was angry that her son’s arrest was used as an example.

“My son’s gun looks nothing like that,” she said. “My son has nothing to do with those kids out there shooting people, hurting people.”

The paintball gun Moore’s son was carrying when he was arrested, although similar in size to the police rifle, is white and black and the compressed-air cartridge attached to the gun is located at the top.

“This is clearly a paintball gun. It’s white, it does not look like one of those. I would never let my son carry that around,” she said about the one in the police photo.

Moore admits to buying her son the paintball gun and said he and many of the teens in the neighborhood have been playing paintball all summer with no issues.

“I’d rather have him out there in those woods playing, staying off the street, staying out of trouble,” she said. “We make sure they’re being safe, they have masks and gloves to protect them.”