San Francisco, United States

San Francisco police on Thursday released the first official details of the incident wherein a man crashed into the Chinese consulate on October 9. They said that the man had a crossbow and arrows and swung a knife at officers before being shot dead by a police sergeant.

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The police, as per a CBS News report, also showed body camera footage from the responding officers. 

What did the body cam footage show? 

Speaking at a virtual town hall on Thursday, San Francisco Police Acting Commander Mark Im said that the man — identified as 31-year-old Zhanyuan Yang — had a crossbow and arrows in his car. 

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Body cam footage showed Yang covering his face with his left arm after getting pepper sprayed by a security guard.

Also read | Man crashes into Chinese consulate in San Francisco, shot dead by police

He had a knife in his right hand, which he used to make "multiple, rapid, downward swinging motions" at responding officer San Francisco Sergeant Troy Carrasco, who was the first to arrive on the scene, and a consulate security guard.

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Footage shows Carrasco touching Yang's back and asking the security guard, "Does he have a gun?"

The man then turns towards the officer and the guard and starts swinging the knife. Following this, Carrasco opens fire and shortly after, he can be heard shouting: "You should have told me he had a knife!"

Why didn't the police de-escalate the situation?

Responding to a question about the police's apparent lack of attempts to de-escalate the situation, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said he was not going to make any judgements nor guess what the officer was thinking.

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However, he said that officers are trained to first stop a threat when confronted with an active threat.

"If we believe that we have an active attacker event, we will do everything possible to stop that threat immediately so we don't have a loss of life," said Scott.

Yang was taken to the hospital, where he died.

Police investigators are still looking into the motive behind this attack. Briefing the press, Scott said: "Why he showed up there, what he was doing, that's still under investigation and there's nothing that we have at this point that I can release."

In a statement released after the car crash, San Francisco's Chinese diplomatic post called the incident "a serious threat to the safety of the staff and people at the scene".

It said that an "unidentified person drove violently into the document hall of the consulate, posing a serious threat to the safety of the staff and people at the scene, and causing serious damage to the facilities and property of the consulate."

(With inputs from agencies)

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