I UNDRSTAND WHAT HE DID, BUT I THOUGHT THE POLICE WERE TRAINED TO DEAL WITH SITUATIONS LIKE THIS ALIL DIFFERENT,SMH
San Francisco police shot and killed a man carrying a knife in the Bayview district who reportedly matched the description of the suspect in a nearby stabbing, police Chief Greg Suhr said.
Witness video posted online to Instagram appears to show the moments before the fatal shooting when several police officers surrounded the distressed man on a Third Street sidewalk near Gilman Avenue around 4:35 p.m.
The camera’s view is obscured when police open fire, and the barrage of gunshots can only be heard.
About 45 minutes before the police shooting, a victim who had been stabbed in the shoulder walked into a police station and described his assailant. The victim is expected to survive.
The victim, who was stabbed near Third Street and Le Conte Avenue, about six blocks away from the fatal shooting, described the alleged stabber as “still being in the area,” Suhr said. After a witness also confirmed the man was nearby, Bayview officers set up a perimeter around 4:20 p.m.
The officers were just wrapping up their search for the suspect when other officers found him on the 2900 block of Keith, between Gilman and LeConte avenues, Suhr said. The man was reportedly armed with the kitchen knife police believe was used in the stabbing.
The officers convened and told the man to drop his weapon, Suhr said. Witnesses on a nearby bus reportedly confirmed the exchange to police.
Police fired and struck the man several times with beanbags while moving away from him, also shooting the ground in front of him with another less-lethal weapon, Suhr said. But when an officer tried to cut off the man’s path, and the man moved toward him carrying the knife, five officers opened fire, killing him.
“We have since recovered or found some video, they appear to show the officers encircle him and they appear to show the suspect moving toward the officer before the shots were fired,” Suhr said, noting that the man had a knife in his hand in the video.
The Instagram video appears to show the suspect backed against a wall, leaning over at times and waving his hands. In the seconds before he was shot, the suspect was walking along the sidewalk toward an officer.
The video looks like it was recorded by a passenger on a nearby Muni bus. Other passengers can be heard screaming when the gunshots ring out.
Suhr would not confirm the video posted on Instagram was authentic or that it was the video he was referenced.
Police gave the suspect CPR, and paramedics arrived at the scene, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. The suspect’s identity has not been released.
The fatal shooting by police followed an incident last month in which a man climbed to the top of a construction site at St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission district and aimed a stolen shotgun at the hospital and passersby. The suspect was shot and killed by San Francisco police.
In October, a man who was reportedly throwing bottles into a South of Market street near another construction site in The City was also shot dead by police.