LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles police shot and killed a homeless man on skid row Sunday during an intense altercation caught on video in which an officer can be heard twice shouting “drop the gun!”
The dramatic video — viewed more than 2 million times in the first seven hours after it was posted on Facebook — captures the final seconds of the confrontation, showing four officers engaged in a frantic struggle with the man, wrestling him to the ground.
The audio suggests the officers believed the man had gained control of one of their guns. After the shouts of “drop the gun,” five shots are heard. One officer with arms extended can be seen firing his weapon. It was not clear whether any other officer also fired.
The man, whose identity had not been released, died on the way to a nearby hospital, said coroner’s investigator Lt. Larry Dietz. Police said no officers were injured.
Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Barry Montgomery said there could be more video recordings of the incident, noting that he could see two surveillance cameras mounted on buildings at the scene. Another police source, who requested anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, said the encounter was recorded by on-body cameras worn by more than one of the involved officers.
Police had responded to a robbery call in the 500 block of San Pedro Street around noon, Montgomery said. At one point during the confrontation a non-lethal Taser had been deployed, but investigators did not know whether it struck the man, he added.
Montgomery said a “click-click-click” of a Taser can be heard on the video, just before the gunfire begins.
The video also shows two officers in the foreground grappling with and handcuffing a woman who had picked up a dropped police nightstick.
An angry crowd gathered immediately after the gunfire, as police cordoned off the scene and ordered onlookers to back away. One witness can be heard complaining that there had been at least six officers to handle the situation, and that the mortally wounded man had been unarmed.
“Ain’t nobody got no (expletive) gun,” he shouts.
“That man never was a threat,” said Lonnie Franklin, 53, who said he was across the street when the shooting occurred. “The amount of officers present at the time could have subdued him.”
Witnesses identified the dead man by his street name, “Africa,” and said he’d been living in a tent on skid row for a few months after spending a long stretch in a mental health facility.
The LAPD has struggled for years to effectively police downtown’s expansive skid row, which is a frequent destination for people with severe mental illnesses, turning the neighborhood into a kind of open-air asylum.
“We have to deal with the aftermath of a system that’s failed,” Officer Deon Joseph, a 16-year skid row beat cop, said Sunday.
Police Commission President Steve Soboroff said Sunday evening he was watching the video repeatedly trying to hear what exactly the officers said to the man.
“My heart just started pounding just watching it,” Soboroff said. “I feel the adrenaline. These situations are just so horrific.”
Soboroff said a key issue would be whether the man did try to grab the officer’s gun. Otherwise, he said, it’s unclear what might have prompted the use of deadly force.
“To me, that would be the only explanation that something would happen that quickly,” Soboroff said. “It escalated right in front of our eyes.”
Soboroff said the LAPD, its independent inspector general and the district attorney’s office would each investigate the shooting “very, very carefully.”
“Of course, I would encourage people not to rush to judgment. It’s not fair to anybody. It’s not fair to the family of the victim or the victim or the officers,” he said. “We’ll find out what happened.”
A group of Los Angeles civil rights leaders urged the police commission on Sunday night to hold a special hearing on the use of force by officers on skid row.
Last May, a mentally ill homeless man named Carlos Ocana died after falling from a rooftop after officers shocked him with a Taser. The death remains under investigation.
According to a Los Angeles Times data analysis, there have been 12 fatal officer-involved incidents in downtown Los Angeles since 2000. There was none in 2014 and one in 2015 before Sunday’s violence.
People who witnessed Sunday’s shooting described a chaotic scene leading up to the events captured on the video.
Dennis Horne, 29, said Africa had been fighting with someone inside his tent, one of many that line streets in the area.
When Africa refused to comply with a police order to come out of the tent, officers used a stun gun and dragged him out, Horne said. The officers tackled Africa, forcing him to his back on the sidewalk.
“It’s sad,” Horne said. “There’s no justification to take somebody’s life.”
Jose Gil, 38, said he saw Africa swinging at the police before one of the officers started shouting that the man was going for his gun.
Ina Murphy, who lives in an apartment nearby, said Africa had arrived in the area about four or five months ago. He told her he had recently been released after spending 10 years in a mental facility, Murphy said.
Another area resident, whose driver’s license identified him as Booker T. Washington, said police had come by repeatedly to ask Africa to take down his tent. People are allowed to sleep on the streets from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., but are supposed to remove their tents in the daytime, under a court agreement.
“This man got shot over a tent,” Washington said.
(Times staff writers Richard Winton, Armand Emamdjomeh, Matt Hamilton and Joel Rubin contributed to this report.)
