(Reuters)
USA – Police in California say they shot dead a Ugandan refugee when he pulled an object that turned out to be an e-cigarette from his pocket and pointed it at a police officer, the BBC reports.
Mr Olango was killed on Tuesday after officers responded to a call from his sister who said that he needed help.
She said he was mentally unwell.
“I just called for help and you killed him, ” said a woman in a video posted on the internet which showed the aftermath of the shooting appeared to corroborate the police’s account that they had ordered the man to remove his hand from his pocket.
“When he lifted his hand out … he did have something in his hand but it wasn’t no gun, and that’s when they shot him,” said the woman on the video.
Claims that Mr Olango had his hands in the air when he was shot have been disputed by the police.
Dozens of demonstrators have taken to the streets of El Cajon, a suburb of San Diego, in protest at the killing of Alfred Okwera Olango, who was 38.
El Cajon police chief Jeff Davis said Mr Olango died after one officer fired an electronic stun gun and another officer simultaneously fired his firearm several times.
Police, who had already acknowledged that the object was not a weapon, confirmed on Wednesday that the object was a three inches (7.6cm) long silver vaping cigarette.
Christopher Rice-Wilson of the civil rights group Alliance San Diego questioned why one of the officers felt non-lethal force was appropriate while the other did not.
Agnes Hassan said she knew Mr Olango, whom she described as well-educated but mentally ill. Ms Hassan said she had spent time with him in a refugee camp en route to the United States.
Police said the shooting happened outside a row of shops as they responded to a report of a mentally unstable person walking in and out of traffic. The call was apparently made by the victim’s sister who said he was “not acting like himself”.
Courtesy of the BBC.
