A police pursuit in Los Angeles County concluded with officers shooting an unarmed man near the 105 Freeway in Watts, as confirmed by local authorities. The Los Angeles Police Department stated the incident occurred on Wednesday afternoon, involving a car they believed to have been "linked to a felony warrant," FOX 11 reported.
The chase initiated near 113th Street and Compton Avenue, leading officers to an on-ramp to the freeway before the suspect made a U-turn, abandoned the vehicle, and initiated a foot pursuit that took into the intersection of Central Avenue, carrying a backpack, police said they shot the man after he allegedly reached into the backpack, igniting a response grounded in the fear he might have been retrieving a weapon. Paramedics later transported the victim to the hospital in a stable condition, and a search of his backpack revealed no weapons.
Additional details emerged from ABC7, which noted the officer involved in the shooting was a five-year veteran of the force who will be required to articulate what he believed was happening at the moment of the shooting. Det. Meghan Aguilar explained, "You have to believe that there is an immediate defense of life. So tonight, what will happen is that those officers will be interviewed. That officer, specifically the one that did fire at the suspect, will have to articulate exactly what he believed was happening at that moment, or what he saw, or believed he saw." Officers' body-worn video, a part of the investigation process, will be reviewed for further clarity into the incident.
Despite the lack of a weapon, the suspect, whose identity and the nature of the alleged felony warrant remain undisclosed, is being investigated in connection to the events leading up to the chase and the non-fatal shooting this article has described which has sparked an ongoing investigation to pieces together the decisions made in those critical moments when the suspect reached into his backpack, which CBS News reports.
