Oakland Police shoot, kill mentally ill Black man wielding ax
Oakland police shot and killed a mentally ill man when he charged at them with an ax after they shot him with stun guns and a bean-bag round, authorities said Friday. Booker Carloss II, 50, who was a paralegal student, was shot shortly after 10 p.m. Thursday in the basement of his home at 2830 Magnolia St. in West Oakland. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Carloss' brothers said they had called police to remove him from the home because he was acting erratically and wielding an ax. He did not react when Sgt. Kevin Johnson and Sgt. Fred Mestas fired their Tasers, nor after Officer Jacob Floyd fired a bean-bag round, police said. Police said Mestas, a 27-year veteran, and Floyd, on the force for two years, had no choice but to fire their weapons when Carloss charged toward Mestas with a 3-foot-long ax. On Friday, Carloss' brothers, Jerome, 48, and Glenn, 46, decried what they called a needless use of deadly force, and said they believed the officers fired their guns within 10 to 15 seconds of entering the basement. They showed a reporter the small room, part of which was matted with blood. "They came in like gangbusters," Glenn Carloss said. "We just feel that they had an opportunity to resolve this without having to go into a kill mode." Jerome Carloss, who declined to discuss his brother's mental health, said the police "went down and strictly murdered this man." [more]