Investigators on Tuesday released graphic footage of a police shooting in Van Nuys last month that left both a knife-wielding man and the woman he was holding hostage dead.
Calling her death “tragic,” Los Angeles police Chief Michel Moore said Elizabeth Tollision, a 49-year-old homeless woman with disabilities that left her with limited mobility, was shot twice as three police officers fired on the man holding a knife to her neck.
The man, Guillermo Perez, 32, was also killed. The police video features footage from two of the officers’ body-worn cameras. It shows Perez holding a folding chair and a knife as he fends off multiple bean-bag rounds from police.
Warning — this photo gallery of images from the LAPD body cam video includes intense images:
This screen grab from a YouTube video released by the Los Angeles police dept. shows a suspect holding a knife to the throat of a hostage seconds before the officers opened fire striking the suspect and the hostage in Van Nuys on June 16, 2018.
Within a few seconds, Perez grabs Tollison and holds the long, serrated knife to her neck. That’s when the officers fire multiple rounds.
The incident occurred just after 1 p.m. June 16 on the 6400 block of Tyrone Avenue in Van Nuys, outside a homeless outreach center.
Moore on Tuesday said the officers fired 18 times. He said this was the second police shooting fo an unarmed bystander in a hostage situation in just six weeks. Last month, police also killed a Trader Joe’s manager in Silver Lake when a shooting suspect ran inside the store.
The video was released under the city’s new program mandating the Los Angeles Police Department publish video captured by its officers’ body-worn cameras.
The video, one of a handful of “critical incident” videos released so far under the program, was published to the department’s Youtube channel.
The city’s police commission voted in March to require LAPD to release footage collected in such incidents within 45 days. The incidents include all shootings by officers and physical encounters that leave a person dead or seriously injured.Using the footage from body cameras and other security cameras, as well as audio from police radio dispatches and 911 calls, the investigators stitch together the videos into detailed reports explaining what led up to the incident and why officers made the decisions they did.
The LAPD critical-incident videos released so far include a violent arrest in South L.A. in May that left a man dead, and a fatal shooting of a stabbing suspect in Pacoima in June.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/07...left-suspect-victim-dead-in-june-is-released/
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