LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles police has played out another police brutality in shooting an homeless man outside a Los Angeles homeless shelter, fighting him to the ground and then shooting him to death.
What led to the scuffle or police attack on the man is not clear, but a video taken by an eye-witness show police officers tackling a man to the ground, while three others tried to subdue him before one pulled out a Taser and shocked him.
Then a voice yelled, “Drop the gun!”
And within seconds, five gunshots rang out, eliciting screams of shock from bystanders.
“Why did y’all shoot that man?” one witness yelled. “Y’all got (him) Tased. Why did you y’all shoot that man?”
The incident happened on Sunday at Los Angeles’ Skid Row, near the Union Rescue Mission – a homeless shelter located within a neighborhood characterized by poverty. The incident it spilled online with thousands of people decrying what they described as police brutality in subduing and then shooting a man who already had his back to the ground.
“I had my phone out, you know, videotaping the whole thing ’cause we’ve been hearing on the news about police brutality,” said Anthony Blackburn who shot the video with his cell phone. “I just wanted to film it and just make sure everything was alright. But I ended up seeing a tragedy.”
Los Angeles police Commander Andrew Smith informed that the man was suspected of robbery, but rather than surrender, started to fight off police officers who subdued and then Tasered him. And when the Taser didn’t work and the man reached for an officer’s gun, three officers promptly responded and shot him dead.
“I don’t know what they found on this individual,” Smith told CNN. “Obviously he didn’t have a firearm.”
An eyewitness, Tonya Edwards said she knew the man as a homeless individual with “a lot of mental issues.” Yolanda Young, another eyewitness said the unfortunate man “had three Tasers on him. He was down but then he jumped up, like he was juiced up, and then he started swinging at the police and they were fighting him back. They shot him five times.”
Then hell nearly broke loose when a police officer lost his baton as others fought the man to the ground – a woman picked up the baton.
“Get my stick! Get my stick!” the officer yelled, as other officers tackled the woman to the ground.
According to Blackburn, “The young black officer that shot him, he went over to the crowd, telling everybody back up in an aggressive way.”
The dead man was known as “Africa” or “Brother Africa” and was remembered by a crowd that gathered at the Los Angeles Pershing Square on Sunday evening.
It is not clear whether the officers that shot the unarmed man will proceed on administrative leave, but the LA police department has promised to review videos from various sources as they investigate the incident.