Police Shot And Killed A Black Man In San Diego Area; Protesters Gathering (Video)

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A black man was shot and killed by police at a strip mall in suburban San Diego who was reportedly acting erratically. He pulled an object from his pocket, pointing it at officers and assumed a “shooting stance,” authorities said.

According to the Associated Press, one of the officers tried and failed to subdue the unidentified man with a stun gun before the other officer fired several times, El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis said at a late night news conference. Davis would not say what the object was, but acknowledged it was not a weapon.

Before police announced the death, dozens of protesters gathered at the shooting scene, with some claiming the man was shot with his hands raised. Police disputed that and produced a frame from cellphone video taken by a witness that appeared to show the man in the “shooting stance” as two officers approached with weapons drawn.

The fatal shooting comes just weeks after black men were shot and killed by police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and in Charlotte, North Carolina, where violent protests broke out.

The El Cajon protest was angry but peaceful. Several dozen people, most of them black, gathered and some cursed at officers guarding the scene. They chanted “black lives matter!” and “hands up, don’t shoot!”

Davis urged the community to remain calm and said the investigation will be thorough.

“This will be transparent,” he said. “This will be looked at by multiple sets of eyes, and not just ours.”

The district attorney was on scene and also will investigate.

Police said they were called to the mall shortly after 2 p.m. by the sister of a man in his 30s who said he was “not acting like himself” and walking in traffic. They say the man refused “multiple” orders to take his hand from his pocket, then was shot after pulling out the object.

When detectives arrived police say a female witness came forward and voluntarily provided cellphone video of the incident. Authorities did not release the video, only the single frame from it. El Cajon officers do not wear body cameras.

Meantime, other videos quickly surfaced showing the aftermath. In one posted to Facebook, an unidentified woman is heard telling police at the scene that the man was ordered to take his hand out of his pocket.

“I said: ‘Take your hand out your pocket, baby, or they’re going to shoot you.’ He said ‘no, no, no,’ ” the woman said. “When he lifted his hand out … he did have something in his hand but it wasn’t no gun, and that’s when they shot him.”

Another woman on the video who was wearing hospital-style work clothing said she’s the man’s sister. She appeared distraught, repeatedly shrieking and crying, telling officers that she had called them to help her brother, who she described as mentally ill.

“I just called for help, and you came and killed him,” she said.

Michael Ray Rodriguez was among the witnesses who said the man had his hands in the air. He said that he was driving out of his apartment complex past the shooting scene and saw a shirtless black man with his hands raised.

The officer “let go of the trigger and shot him again and again,” Rodriguez told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

El Cajon is about 15 miles northeast of San Diego and has a population of about 100,000. It is 69 percent white and 6 percent black, according to 2010 census figures, and has become a home for many refugees fleeing Iraq and, more recently, Syria.

UPDATE: September 29, 2016:

(Reuters) – A second night of mostly peaceful protests over the fatal police shooting in Southern California of an unarmed black man said to be mentally ill climaxed on Wednesday as protesters confronted officers in riot gear who retreated as tensions rose.

Protesters earlier in the day shouted “murder” and demanded a federal investigation of Tuesday’s shooting in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, which came just as racially charged anger over similar incidents in two other U.S. cities during the past two weeks had begun to subside.

The Tuesday mid-afternoon shooting unfolded after two El Cajon police officers responded to several calls about a mentally unstable person walking in traffic, then confronted the man behind a restaurant.

One policeman opened fire with his service pistol and his partner simultaneously fired a Taser stun gun when the man pulled an object from his pocket and took aim at them in a “shooting stance,” according to police.

No weapon from the man, however, was recovered at the scene, police said. The object he was said to be carrying was not specified.

The next day, Mayor Bill Wells confirmed the victim’s identity as Alfred Olango, a 38-year-old Ugandan immigrant with a U.S. felony record of convictions for drug and weapon offenses, according to federal court records.

Friends and activists said Olango was mentally ill and may have been suffering a seizure in the moments before his death.

Police said they obtained cellphone video of the shooting from a bystander, but authorities released only a still frame showing two officers pointing weapons at a man who was aiming an object at them.

In a separate video clip taken moments after the shooting and posted on social media, a woman who refers to herself as the victim’s sister is heard crying in anguish, “Oh my God. You killed my brother. I just called for help and … you killed him.”

Wells told a news conference on Wednesday that he had seen the footage obtained by police. He described it as “certainly enlightening,” adding, “I don’t believe that this is going to be a tremendously complicated process for people to figure out what happened.”

“I saw a man who was distraught, a man who was acting in ways that looked like he was in great pain, and I saw him get gunned down and killed, and it broke my heart. If it was my son I would be devastated,” Wells said.

Wells said all 120 officers on El Cajon’s police force receive training from San Diego County’s Psychiatric Emergency Response Teams, or PERT, program, though no PERT-assigned officer was available for dispatch to Tuesday’s call.

2 COMMENTS

  1. when will people realize…act suspicious and point anything at a cop you will be shot. From what was said he may wanted to commit suicide by cop. Now let the thieves and violent protest start because we all know that will solve the problem.

  2. As DeShawn said, it could have been him or one of his friends, or even his mom. Anyone who pulls something out of their pocket and points it at cops (or a CCW holder) while posturing in a shooting stance, regardless of their skin pigmentation, should expect an undesirable outcome for themselves.

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