Los Angeles police shot a man experiencing a mental health crisis moments after officers entered his parents' Koreatown apartment and ordered him to drop the knife he was holding, newly released body camera video shows of the shooting earlier this month.
Police had been called to remove Yong Yang, 40, from the home after a mental health doctor sent to evaluate him said he had become combative. The doctor told one of the first officers on the scene that Yang, who suffered from bipolar disorder, had tried to kick him and told him, “You need to go to the hospital,” according to footage of the encounter posted on the police YouTube channel. of the Angels. Thursday.
Yang's parents denied that their son was a threat to anyone and said they intentionally avoided calling the police to avoid the risk of him coming to harm while acting erratically. They said during a tearful news conference last week that a representative from the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health who showed up at his home spent less than two minutes talking to Yang before summoning armed officers to the scene.
The shooting occurred shortly before noon on May 2, in the Yang family's second-floor apartment in the 400 block of South Gramercy Place.
LAPD identified the officer who fired the shot as Andrés López. Lopez, who joined the department in 2017, was involved in a previous shooting while on duty, when he shot and wounded a mentally ill man who was carrying what turned out to be a replica gun outside the police station. of the Olympic Division in 2021.
The doctor identified himself as a member of the county's Psychiatric Mobile Response Team, or PMRT. He told officers that Yang's behavior had forced her parents to leave her apartment and sleep in her car the night before the incident. Police explained their options to Yang's father at the scene and told him that if they arrested him for trespassing they could not put him on so-called 5150 suspension, a detention of up to 72 hours for those considered a threat. themselves or others.
The officers also warned the father that they might be forced to “put their hands” on his son to get him out of the apartment, as the video shows. “Yes, I understand,” the father responded.
Before the shooting, a police supervisor is seen talking to Yang through the closed door, trying to convince him to come out alone. Her incoherent responses led her to sigh and tell her officers, “Okay, we're going to use force,” the video shows.
Police left and returned a few minutes later, with one officer carrying a 40mm projectile launcher standing on the cluttered staircase while another officer opened the apartment door with a key, the video shows. When that officer and Lopez entered the apartment, they saw Yang standing in the middle of the living room, holding a kitchen knife. He began walking toward the officers, who yelled at him to drop the knife, before Lopez opened fire.
The encounter lasted approximately 10 seconds.
At a news conference last week, Yang's family called for an independent investigation into the shooting, questioning why officers didn't use so-called less-lethal weapons to try to subdue Yang and accusing police of keeping them in the dark for hours. about his death of his son. An attorney for the parents said they are preparing to file a government lawsuit against the city, the usual precursor to a wrongful death lawsuit.
It was the 12th time this year that LAPD officers opened fire while on duty, and at least half of those cases involved someone experiencing a behavioral crisis, according to a Times database on police shootings.
Three of the shootings were fatal, including a man experiencing what family members described as a bipolar episode who was shot to death during an encounter with LAPD officers at a Skid Row warehouse. Officers said at the time they mistook the plastic fork he was holding for a knife.
