Oakland Police shoot, kill mentally ill Black man wielding ax
Wednesday, November 17, 2004 at 03:49PM
TheSpook
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Oakland police shot and killed a mentally ill man when he charged at
them with an ax after they shot him with stun guns and a bean-bag
round, authorities said Friday. Booker Carloss II, 50, who was a
paralegal student, was shot shortly after 10 p.m. Thursday in the
basement of his home at 2830 Magnolia St. in West Oakland. He was
pronounced dead at the scene. Carloss' brothers said they had called
police to remove him from the home because he was acting erratically
and wielding an ax. He did not react when Sgt. Kevin Johnson and Sgt.
Fred Mestas fired their Tasers, nor after Officer Jacob Floyd fired a
bean-bag round, police said. Police said Mestas, a 27-year veteran, and
Floyd, on the force for two years, had no choice but to fire their
weapons when Carloss charged toward Mestas with a 3-foot-long ax. On
Friday, Carloss' brothers, Jerome, 48, and Glenn, 46, decried what they
called a needless use of deadly force, and said they believed the
officers fired their guns within 10 to 15 seconds of entering the
basement. They showed a reporter the small room, part of which was
matted with blood. "They came in like gangbusters," Glenn Carloss said.
"We just feel that they had an opportunity to resolve this without
having to go into a kill mode." Jerome Carloss, who declined to discuss
his brother's mental health, said the police "went down and strictly
murdered this man." [more]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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