In the Southern California community of Huntington Park, residents are concerned about whether police used excessive force when they shot and killed a double-amputee man in a wheelchair whom they found dangerous and threatening with a knife.
According to a statement released by the Huntington Park Police Department on Monday, police responded to a complaint of a stabbing Thursday afternoon and found a man with a life-threatening puncture wound resulting in a collapsed lung and internal bleeding.
The victim identified the assailant as a black man in a wheelchair who dismounted the wheelchair, rushed to the victim unprovoked, and stabbed him in the chest with a 12″ butcher knife. The attacker then fled the scene in his wheelchair.
They found the suspect, later identified as Anthony Lowe, a few blocks away, holding a knife. Lowe allegedly refused verbal commands from the police officers, who tried to take him into custody, and he threatened to approach or throw the blade at the officers. Police also said that they tasered Lowe twice but couldn’t stop his advances.
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department reported that the suspect was then shot in the upper chest. He was given emergency care by paramedics but was declared dead.
The involved police officers were put on paid administrative leave as per department policy, and an investigation is pending.
A video appeared online, and Lowe’s sister recognized him. Although the LA County Sheriff’s Department obtained the footage from a nearby business, it did not plan to distribute the video.
On Monday, protesters and Anthony Lowe’s family went to the Huntington Park Police Department’s main office to express their outrage over the murder. Dorothy Lowe, Lowe’s mother, claimed that they killed her son in a wheelchair without legs.
The family is looking for answers and said that Lowe was depressed after losing his legs in an accident last year. An autopsy is pending.
