Los Angeles police on Wednesday released video and audio recordings from a deadly officer-involved shooting that occurred at a Watts home in November.
The Nov. 18 incident left three people dead, including Dereck Wilson, a 32-year-old Los Angeles man who allegedly fired at officers responding to the residence in the 9500 block of Defiance Avenue.
Dereck Wilson is seen in a photo released by Los Angeles police on Jan. 2, 2018.
An officer, Jaral Yolotsi, shot back at Wilson but did not strike him, LAPD said in a video-recorded statement released on Wednesday.
Police later found Wilson inside the home with a gunshot wound to his head, the agency said in an earlier statement. He was taken to a hospital, where he was subsequently taken off life support and died, according to LAPD.
No officers were hurt in the gunfire, police said.
According to LAPD, authorities responded to the home just before 6 a.m. after receiving calls about a shooting.
The agency released a 911 call from Wilson’s grandmother.
“Please send the police–police, paramedics. I’m shot!” she says in the recording.
LAPD said officers who arrived at the scene heard gunshots from inside the home before seeing Wilson exit the home and fire a handgun in their direction.
That’s when Yolotsi returned fire with one round of ammunition, LAPD said. Yolotsi struck a vehicle Wilson was standing behind but did not hit the 32-year-old, LAPD spokesman Kevin Brawner said in the video release.
Wilson then went back inside the house, where officers ultimately found him wounded along with a handgun, a dead female victim and a male who had sustained gunshot wounds, LAPD said. The male victim was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.
The agency released footage from Yolotsi’s body camera, which shows the officer holding his weapon up. The officer had not activated the audio when the shooting happened, the agency said. The officer is also seen apparently firing his gun in a video recorded from a patrol car.
Police also released another body cam video in which a sobbing woman comes out of the home and approaches the officers outside.
“I think he shot himself in the room,” she’s heard saying in the recording.
She, along with another female victim, sustained gunshot wounds that were not life threatening, LAPD said.
The day of the incident, a woman named Cheryl, who identified herself as Wilson’s mother, told reporters that her son had called saying, “Mama, I just killed somebody.”
“I don’t know. He just snapped,” the woman said. “I don’t know what happened, how it happened.”
Cheryl also said that her mother, Wilson’s grandmother, told her that he had shot her and another family member.
LAPD said Wilson, who had prior convictions for unlawful possession of a loaded weapon, possession of a controlled substance for sale, and being a felon possession of a firearm, had no previous contact with the agency’s mental evaluation unit.
The case remained under investigation. Authorities provided no further details about the victims’ identities.
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Source: “Los Angeles” – Google News