A San Francisco police sergeant fatally shot a man shortly after noon on Thursday in downtown San Francisco after the suspect got on top of another sergeant, started beating him up, and grabbed his gun.
“He’s got my gun! Shoot him!” the sergeant yelled to his colleague just before the deadly gunfire, said Police Chief Greg Suhr. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that an anonymous witness confirmed Suhr’s account of the incident, observing that the suspect “got on top of the sergeant and started whipping his ass.” He also affirmed that the suspect removed the officer’s gun.
The suspect, identified as a man in his 20s, was shot twice by the sergeant’s partner at close aim and died at the scene. The incident came as a shock to passers by who did said they did not anticipate for something of this nature to take place in broad daylight.
A construction worker who flagged the sergeants down initially noticed the suspect and told them that he was throwing bottles into the street. The sergeants talked to the suspect and tried to arrest and handcuff him before he resisted the officer.
Approximately five hours after the shooting, a half dozen protesters from the Stop Mass Incarceration group in Oakland gathered at the scene shouting slogans and passing out fliers.
The group was founded in 2011 by political activists Dr. Cornel West and Carl Dix, who is a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
Protester Hector Velez said “It’s gotten out of hand. They shoot people knowing they’re going to get away with it.”
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