LOS ANGELES (AP) — Police fatally shot a homeless man on Skid Row during a “brutal” videotaped struggle in which a rookie officer cried out that the man had hold of his gun before three other officers opened fire, the Los Angeles police chief said Monday.
Chief Charlie Beck said video showed the man reaching toward the officer’s waistband. The officer’s gun was found partly cocked and jammed with a bullet in the chamber and another in the ejection port, indicating a struggle for the weapon.
“You can hear the young officer who was primarily engaged in the confrontation saying that `He has my gun. He has my gun,'” Beck said. “He says it several times, with conviction.”
–
Dennis Horne, 29, told the Los Angeles Times that the man had been fighting with someone else in his tent before officers arrived.
“It’s sad,” Horne said. “There’s no justification to take somebody’s life.”
Tents and cardboard shelters cover the sidewalks of Skid Row, the downtown neighborhood where an estimated 1,700 homeless people live. Many of them struggle with mental illness and addiction.
