Newly released video captured the moments before a knife-wielding double amputee was fatally shot by police in Los Angeles and shows him stabbing a man in front of a gas station.
Huntington Park on Monday released video of Anthony Lowe, 36, sitting in his wheelchair on Jan. 26 before attacking a pedestrian with a 12-inch butcher knife near a Shell station.
The man, who is seen staggering, was critically wounded with a collapsed lung but is recovering.
Police also released the 911 call made by the victim, who identified himself as Ramiro.
“I got stabbed in the heart right now,” he says, moaning in pain.
When asked to describe his attacker, Ramiro says, “He has no feet,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Another video from a nearby business captured cops approaching Lowe — who reportedly lost his legs last year –as he waved the knife and tried to throw it.
After being flipped out of his chair, Lowe lifts himself onto his stumps and scrambles away as he continues to wave the blade at the officers.
Police said the cops first tried to subdue him with a Taser but that he ignored “verbal commands and threatened to advance or throw the knife at officers.”
The officers then open fire at Lowe, who crumples onto the sidewalk and dies.
“This was an unnecessary killing. It never should have happened,” Lowe’s family attorney Annee Della Donna said, KTLA reported.
“They didn’t think twice. A double amputee who was hobbling away,” she said. “The police could have stood back 75 feet and hit him with the low-impact devices they have in the back of their vehicle.”
Della Donna suggested that the officers could have used non-lethal means to subdue Lowe.
“They could have pulled their shields out of their vehicles if they were worried about getting hit by the knife,” the attorney said, ABC 7 reported. “So many other options than executing him on the streets.”
Police Chief Cosme Lozano said the investigation in ongoing and that he wanted to release the additional footage for the sake of transparency.
“I fully understand the need for answers and the rush to judgment, but we must allow peace and patience to guide us through this process,” he said.
“I emphasize that by releasing the video and audio recordings, it is with the goal of advancing full disclosure and transparency of the events that transpired from beginning to end,” Lozano told reporters.
He said his department is cooperating with the LA County Sheriff’s Department, which is leading the investigation.
Lowe’s family is expected to file a lawsuit against the Huntington Park Police Department and is calling for the prosecution of the officers, who have been placed on paid administrative leave.
Lozano said the LA County District Attorney’s Office will determine if the cops’ actions were justifiable.
Ramiro described the harrowing attack in an interview with FOX 11 from his hospital bed.
“As I was crossing the street, I noticed halfway down the crossing … when the green light was on for me to cross the street. I know that he got off his wheelchair and had to stop and takes about three or four steps and looks at me, but I think nothing of it, right?” he told the outlet.
Ramiro said Lowe asked him, “Are you all right?”
He said he replied “Yes” before he “just punched me. But I did see the knife on him. And I took two steps forward. And that’s when I noticed the blood gushing out of [the] bottom of my armpit.”
He quickly realized he had not been punched, but stabbed with a large knife.
Asked if he thought he was going to die, Ramiro — who did not want his last name used — said: “Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Towards my injuries. Yes, I did. Seeing that blood gushing out of you. Yes, I did. I thought I was a doctor right there.”
He added: “Now, I understand him being in a wheelchair and everything. But why would he attack somebody like that? What’s the reason for?”
Ramiro also credited a stranger for calling 911 and a cop who applied pressure to his wound and offered words of comfort.
“I think he did save my life by putting pressure on it and giving me those words of hope,” he said. “He said that ‘everything’s gonna be all right. You’re going to make it.’ So I think those words are hope that he had faith in me, that I was going to survive.”
Meanwhile, Lowe’s mother, Dorothy Lowe, told NBC News that her son had experienced a mental health crisis hours before his death.
He woke up that morning “agitated and frustrated” at the loss of both his legs — and that although he was scheduled to receive prosthetic limbs, he was experiencing more depressive episodes.
“That morning I felt something,” she told the outlet. “He woke up a bit off, and I asked him if he was OK, and he said: ‘Yeah, I just need some air.’ I offered to take him out, but he wanted to go out alone.”
Dorothy said she called police, who spoke to her son in her driveway at about 10 a.m.
One of them reportedly assured her that Anthony was depressed because of his legs and just needed to get some fresh air.
“I never knew what they said to him, but he came back emotional. Then he wheeled off, and I didn’t see him again,” the mother added.
Huntington Park police declined to comment to NBC News, citing a pending investigation by the LA County Sheriff’s Department, which did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
