A graphic video posted online Sunday shows Los Angeles Police Department officers shooting a homeless man during a dramatic struggle.
The video begins with a cluster of officers, seven in total, fighting with the man on the sidewalk in the Skid Row area of the city.
WATCH (WARNING: GRAPHIC):
Tarps line the street and other people are milling around in the background of the scene.
As one officer is trading punches and struggling with the man, he drops his police baton. A woman picks it up and the officer yells out “give me my stick.”
At that point, two officers move towards the woman and throw her on the ground and handcuff her.
The officer was on top of the man, and the struggle continued. A Taser was deployed, but the man continued to struggle. The officer is then heard saying what sounds like “he’s going for my gun” or “drop the gun.”
Five shots ring out as the officers back away and hold their weapons on the motionless man. It is unclear if the same officer fired all of the shots or if other officers began firing after the initial shot.
After the shooting, a crowd gathered behind the cameraman grows agitated.
“Y’all guys killed that man,” the man filming the incident is heard saying. The video was uploaded to Facebook by a man named Anthony Blackburn. The caption on the entry is “Homeless man just killed by police minutes ago downtown L.A.”
“And there’s nine motherfucking police out there,” he said. “Ain’t nobody got no fucking guns.”
The homeless man, who the Los Angeles Times reported goes by the name “Africa,” died at the hospital.
LAPD spokesman Sgt. Barry Montgomery told the Times that officers were in the area responding to a robbery call.
One witness, 29-year-old David Horne, told the Times that Africa had been fighting with someone in a tent when officers intervened. They used a Taser on him in order to drag him out of the tent. That’s when the fight ensued.
Towards the end of the video, the officers begin to secure the scene. The officer who had been on top of the man moves towards people in the crowd, many of whom are filming.
The man behind the camera identifies the officer, who is black, and says “that’s the one that killed him right there” before barraging him with other insults.
A close analysis of the video does not clarify which cop began the shooting. The image captured in the split second before the first shot was fired shows what appears to be the barrel of a gun. The officer holding it is not the same officer who was fighting the man and yelling that his gun was being grabbed.
The homeless man’s race cannot be determined from the video.
Graphic video shows LAPD officers fatally shoot homeless man 6 times during altercation – https://t.co/VXssxFZ8bM pic.twitter.com/E50Uh3veNj
— Breaking News Feed (@PzFeed) March 2, 2015
This article has been updated to reflect new information.
