LOS ANGELES (AP) — A homeless ex-convict who was killed by Los Angeles police was wanted for violating probation in a bank robbery case, a U.S. marshal said Tuesday.
The federal warrant was issued Jan. 9 for Charley Saturmin Robinet after he didn’t provide monthly reports to a probation officer in November, December and January, Deputy U.S. Marshal Matthew Cordova said.
A law enforcement official identified Robinet, 39, as the man police killed Sunday on Skid Row. The official wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and talked to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Robinet was released from prison in May 2014 after being convicted in 2000 of holding up a Wells Fargo branch and pistol-whipping an employee to pay for acting classes.
During the confrontation Sunday, Robinet tried to grab a rookie officer’s gun before three officers shot him, authorities said.
Robinet was identified as a French national when he was convicted of three federal charges in the robbery. He served roughly 13 years in prison and then spent six months in a halfway house before being released, said Ed Ross, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons.
Axel Cruau, the consul general for France in Los Angeles, said Robinet stole the identity of a French citizen and was living in the United States under an assumed name. Robinet had applied for a French passport in the late 1990s to come to the United States to “pursue a career in acting.”
Robinet was arrested in the bank robbery along with an accomplice and a getaway driver after they tried to rob the bank in Thousand Oaks, about 40 miles west of downtown Los Angeles.
That arrest spurred the consulate to provide Robinet with support, but officials later realized he is not French, Cruau said.
“The real Charley Robinet is in France apparently living a totally normal life and totally unaware his identity had been stolen years and years ago,” Cruau said.
While in the federal prison in Rochester, Minnesota, the man known as Robinet was assigned to the mental health unit and federal officials said medical staff determined he was suffering from “a mental disease or defect” that required treatment in a psychiatric hospital, documents show.
The three officers who fired their weapons Sunday in the videotaped struggle were veterans of the Skid Row beat who had special training to deal with mentally ill and other people in the downtrodden area, police leaders said.
But the rookie officer who cried out that the man had his gun, leading to the shooting, had considerably less experience, and police didn’t immediately say how much training he had received in dealing with mentally ill people. All officers must go through at least an 11-hour course.
Police Chief Charlie Beck said some of the veteran officers had “completed our most extensive mental illness training over a 36-hour course.” Initial signs showed the officers used what they had learned during the confrontation, despite the outcome, he said.
“The way you have conversations, the way you offer options, the way that you give some space, the body language that you portray, the way that you escalate, all of that is part of the training,” Beck said Monday. “I will make judgment on that when I review the totality of the investigation, but on the face of it, it appears they did try all of that.”
The shooting was captured on video that has been viewed by millions of people online, but exactly what happened remains unclear.
Several dozen people rallied Tuesday in protest of the shooting and observed a moment of silence.
The video showed the homeless man reaching toward the rookie officer’s waistband, Beck said. The officer’s gun was later found partly cocked and jammed with a round of ammunition in the chamber and another in the ejection port, indicating a struggle for the weapon, the chief said.
“You can hear the young officer who was primarily engaged in the confrontation saying that ‘He has my gun. He has my gun,'” Beck said. “He says it several times, with conviction.”
The three other officers then opened fire.
The man who was shot was black, as is the rookie officer who was just short of completing his probationary year on the force, police said.
The violence had echoes of the August police shooting of 25-year-old Ezell Ford, whose death in a struggle with Los Angeles officers brought demonstrations in the city. Ford was unarmed and police said he was shot after reaching for an officer’s gun.
Beck said the officers Sunday had arrived to investigate a robbery report and the homeless man refused to obey their commands and became combative.
A security camera outside a homeless shelter about 75 feet away showed the man pushed over a neighbor’s tent and the two people had a dispute. When officers arrived, they tried to speak to the suspect.
He turned and jumped into his tent, and officers appeared to pull it up and over him to roust him from inside. The man jumped out flailing and kicking before ending up on the ground.
Beck said officers didn’t know if the suspect was arming himself. Stun guns “appeared to have little effect, and he continued to violently resist,” Beck said.
One witness began filming from a closer perspective.
As the man took swings, four officers wrestled him to the ground. The struggle became blurry and distant, but shouting could be heard, followed by five apparent gunshots.
The Los Angeles Police Department’s inspector general and the city’s district attorney are investigating.
Two of the officers suffered minor injuries, including the rookie officer, who is on crutches. All four officers are on paid leave.
