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A Korean man in his 40s suffering from mental illness was shot and killed by police in Koreatown, Los Angeles.
His family sought help from the authorities in the process of moving him to a treatment facility, but he died in a police shootout, sparking controversy over excessive force.
Washington correspondent Wang Jongmyeong reports.
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Around 11 am on the 2nd, local time, a report was received that a man was causing trouble with a weapon in an apartment in Koreatown in LA.
It was a call from an employee of the LA Department of Mental Health who visited the home of Mr Yang, a 40-year-old Korean national suffering from mental illness, to transfer him to a treatment facility.
Shortly after the police arrived at the scene, gunshots rang out from inside the house, and Mr Yang was shot by the police and died on the spot.
[주민]
“Yes, I heard three or four gunshots. I thought someone had committed suicide. “I saw someone visiting that house before the police arrived, and it looked like two people or people from the mental health department.”
The police explained that when they identified themselves and entered the house, they opened fire because Mr Yang approached them with a weapon.
[브루스 보리한/LA 경찰 공보관]
“The police who responded to the scene said they were confronted by a man in his 40s with a weapon. The police opened fire to subdue the man.”
However, family members who were waiting outside the house following police instructions protested that the detention was clearly excessive.
Even if the police knew in advance that Mr. Yang was mentally ill and were trying to defuse the situation in which he used a weapon, did they really have to fire their guns?
[주민]
“It wasn’t a gun, it was done with a knife… (the police) said it was done with a gun, so isn’t that a bit wrong?″
The Korean Association of Los Angeles urged the police to release the video from the on-site recording camera they were wearing to determine the exact situation, and the Consulate General in Los Angeles also asked for a thorough and fair investigation by the local police.
This is Wang Jong-myeong from MBC News in Washington.
Video coverage: Choi Young-seo (MBC AMERICA) / Video editing: Lim Hye-min
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