Police body camera footage of the shooting death of Yong Yang, 40, was released on May 16, showing the circumstances surrounding the incident. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) also released the recording of the 911 call.
The body camera footage totals 24 minutes and 27 seconds. In the video, the LAPD showed multiple views of the scene from the body cameras of at least three officers.
First, the 911 call recording is disclosed. “He was trying to kick me, and he was fighting with his father,” an L.A. County Psychiatric Mobile Response Team (PMRT) clinician told 911.
Officers arrived on the scene around 11:10 a.m. on May 2. Two officers first walked to the house and asked Yang to open the door, but he refused.
Nineteen minutes later, at 11:35 a.m., Olympic Police Supervisor Sergeant Ruvalcaba arrived and warned Yang’s father, Min Yang, before entering the house, “If we put our hands on him or if he gets hurt, that’s the outcome that occurred while we get him out.”
With an officer to handcuff Yang and another to carry a non-lethal weapon, Sergeant Ruvalcaba went up the hallway to try to persuade Yang to come out. But after Yang’s stubborn refusal, they backed down.
Some minutes passed, and at 11:57 a.m., additional police officers arrived, and a total of six officers took the key from Yang’s father and forced the door open.
At that moment, in the living room, Yang, who was clutching a kitchen knife in his left hand, turned to face the police and backed away.
The officer in the lead, upon entering the house and seeing the knife in Yang’s hand, quickly stepped back and drew his gun. He shouted “Drop it” three times before opening fire.
This happened just eight seconds after he opened the door. The distance he “walked toward the officer,” as the police originally stated in their statement, was only four steps.
The video shows that after being shot, Yang fell backward onto the couch. Unresponsive, the officers continued to yell at him, “Don’t move, don’t put your hands in your pockets.” At this point, another officer called the Rescue Ambulance to report that “Yang is conscious and breathing.” By this point, the officers believed Yang was still alive.
Upon entering, the officers removed the knife from the couch on Yang’s left side toward the kitchen, then pinned Yang’s hands behind his back and handcuffed him, as he appeared to be completely unconscious. To do this, four officers surrounded Yang. They laid him on his side, removed his top, and began checking him for gunshot wounds. “He’s good,” one officer said by this point.
Yang was already limp. His eyes were open. At first glance, it seems they have no idea what’s going on with him. But there were clear gunshot marks on his fully undressed upper torso: two shots to the chest and one to the abdomen.
From this point, the officers realized the seriousness of the situation. They shook Yang and asked him urgently, “Can you hear us?” and “Breathe!” but he didn’t respond. They gave him a heart massage, but no other emergency measures were taken.
“Paramedics arrived shortly afterward and tried to revive him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene,” the LAPD said.
LAPD investigators recovered an 11-inch-long kitchen knife from the scene, and narcotics were also found and collected as additional evidence. Despite the LAPD’s release of the body cameras, the justification for the police shooting is unlikely to be persuasive.
The officers forced the door open and entered despite Yang’s refusal to open the door. This triggered the anticipated confrontation.
Earlier, a supervisor on the scene said that the only way to force him to come out was to arrest him for “trespassing.” “We can’t force him to come out to get treatment,” he said. This shows that there are no regulations for dealing with mentally ill persons.
The incident occurred as the police opened the door to force Yang out. The officer with the non-lethal “bean bag” was right behind the officer in the lead when the shooting occurred. However, the bean bag was not used.
It will take some time to determine whether the police’s use of force was justified in this case. “Due to the nature of police shooting investigations, which can take up to a year, it is very early in the process,” the LAPD said in the video, “and we will not decide whether the officer complied with regulations until additional evidence has been collected, analyzed, and evaluated.”
BY SUAH JANG [jang.suah@koreadaily.com]
