Latest update : 2015-03-04
A homeless man who was shot and killed by Los Angeles police officers over the weekend was a convicted bank robber who assumed the identity of a French national to enter the United States during the 1990s, officials said Tuesday.
The victim was initially identified by the Los Angeles Times as 39-year-old Charley Saturmin Robinet, a French citizen. The foreign ministry in Paris, however, denied the claim.Axel Cruau, the French consul general in Los Angeles, told the LA Times on Tuesday that the man killed by police had stolen another man’s identity to obtain a French passport to travel to the United States over 15 years ago.
“He fooled a lot of people, including us, years ago," Cruau said, adding that the real Charley Saturmin Robinet, “is alive and in France".
The man who called himself Robinet had been convicted of armed robbery 15 years ago and jailed, according to the LA Times. He was caught with $33,500 while attempting to flee the crime scene, later telling authorities he robbed the bank to pay for acting classes at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, the newspaper reported.
He was freed in May, the LA Times said.
The man – shot dead after a struggle with police in the city's Skid Row homeless district on Sunday – was known locally as "Africa" and police have not released his name.
Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck said Monday that the victim tried to grab a gun from one of four officers who were trying to restrain him.
Graphic video of the killing has triggered widespread criticism of police tactics, triggering angry protests outside the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) headquarters on Tuesday.
"Hey, hey, ho, ho, chief Beck's got to go!" chanted dozens of protesters.
"Who's accountable? Is it a mentally challenged individual, or poorly trained officers?" asked K.W. Tulloss, the Los Angeles chapter head of the Al Sharpton-led National Action Network.
Steve Diaz, a member of poverty lobby group the Los Angeles Community Action Network, urged a police commission that was meeting to prosecute the officers involved.
He called the shooting a "modern-day lynching" that was the result of a policy "of having extra deployment in our neighbourhood and nothing better to do than to target homeless individuals, people of low income, in the name of gentrification."
A spokesman for the LA County Coroner's office declined to confirm the identity of the victim, pending notification of next of kin.
He added that an autopsy was being carried out Tuesday to determine the cause of death.
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