Authorities are investigating the fatal shooting by police of a stabbing suspect who officers said threatened them with a large knife near Los Angeles last week.
Huntington Park police responding last Thursday said a victim reported being stabbed by a man in a wheelchair, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.
When the officers approached the suspect, he pulled out a foot-long knife and tried to throw it at them, according to a sheriff’s department statement.
The officers used a stun gun on him and the man again tried to throw the knife, “at which time an officer-involved shooting occurred,” the statement said. The man, later identified as Anthony Lowe, was shot in the upper torso and died at the scene.
The Huntington Park Police Department referred inquiries to the sheriff’s department, which is investigating the shooting. Sheriff’s officials didn’t have additional details on the investigation on Wednesday. The sheriff’s department typically investigates law enforcement shootings in the county to determine if officers should face discipline.
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Cellphone video shared on Twitter shows the suspect, whose legs are amputated at the knees, leaving the wheelchair behind and scrambling along the sidewalk followed by officers with their guns drawn. The shooting is not seen in the video.
Lowe’s family and community activists held a news conference Monday demanding the officers who killed him be prosecuted.
“Anthony was brutally executed by Huntington Park police officers last Thursday in an attack that was vicious and cowardly,” said Cliff Smith, an organizer with the Coalition for Community Control Over the Police.
Anthony’s mother, Dorothy Lowe, said: “I just want the truth.”
Lowe’s older sister, Yatoya Toy, said Anthony’s legs were amputated last year after an altercation with law enforcement in Texas, the Los Angeles Times reported. The family, she said, also has questions about that incident.
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