(Newswire.net — July 12, 2016) — Another shooting took place in the US on Monday, in Sacramento, the capital of California.
Citizens noticed a man walking down the street, waving a knife over his head. They called the police complaining that the man was erratic, threatening, and behaving irrationally.
The man charged at the first officer on the scene, who locked himself in his car. He then threw an object at the police vehicle and was seen reaching around his waistband as if trying to retrieve a weapon.
According to Sacramento police Sgt. Bryce Heinlein, the policeman who was attacked managed to save himself by locking himself in his police car. After which the man with the knife turned towards the other two officers in a threatening manner, refusing to comply with repeated commands to drop his weapon.
Police officers shot him on a sidewalk after a chase. The man was taken to hospital but died later.
According to witnesses, the officers tried to calm the man without success. “He was cussing at them”, witness Alton Ford told The Sacramento Bee and added that the police officers gave him plenty of opportunity.
After the incident, officers found a folding knife but no gun, Sgt. Bryce Heinlein said, and explained that there was no indication that the man in Sacramento was targeting police officers.
A spokesman for the police expressed that they did not know the man’s mental stability was but that he was displaying erratic behavior.
William Portanova, a Sacramento defense attorney and former state and federal prosecutor, explained that officers who are confronted with deadly force such as a knife or a gun, are authorized to use deadly force, reports ABC News.
The man has not yet been identified. Police described him as black and in his 50s or 60s.
This new shooting happened amid high tensions across the US in the last few days due to recent police shootings of African Americans in Minnesota and Louisiana, and the homicide of five Dallas police officers during a Black Lives Matter rally last week.