San Jose police now say an officer, who shot and injured a man holding a gun outside a downtown restaurant early Sunday morning, believed they had been walking into an active shooter situation. Meanwhile, the victim's attorney and others are questioning the threat he really posed,
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Police shot a man, whose attorney identified him to the Mercury News on Tuesday as 20-year-old Oakland resident K'aun Green, at 3:11 a.m. as he exited La Victoria Taqueria on Sunday morning, fewer than 30 minutes after another person was shot and killed a block away. Green was hospitalized nearby with non-life-threatening injuries.
In a press conference on Tuesday, San Jose Police Department leaders confirmed the paper's Monday report that Green wrestled the gun away from its owner during a brawl inside the restaurant. Police said the gun wasn't his, but that wasn't clear to the responding officer.
"The information the officer had at the time was that he was responding to a physical fight inside a restaurant involving a person armed with a firearm," Paul Joseph, San Jose's assistant police chief, said during a Tuesday press conference, referring to the nearby homicide. "That fight was occurring feet away from a homicide that had just occurred involving a firearm. There's a certain amount of urgency that is needed."
Adonte Pointer, an Oakland civil rights lawyer representing Green and his family, told the Mercury News on Tuesday that Green, a Contra Costa College football player who starred at Oakland's McClymonds High School, remains hospitalized.
Pointer said Green and his friends were attacked at the restaurant early Sunday morning, and that Green didn’t have time to react to officers' commands that he drop the gun before he was shot.
"My client was at a restaurant minding his business, and someone threatened him and the people he was with," Pointer said of Green in an interview with the paper. "Witnesses told us he was in there begging and pleading with the attackers to calm down and telling him he wasn't there to have any problems, and wanted to go home."
Police released bodycam images of the shooting on Monday following the paper's report, and then video excerpts on Tuesday in conjunction with the press conference. Video suggested Green had his back turned to police when he was shot, which police said will be included in an ongoing investigation.
Pointer disputed the department's claim that Green didn't comply with officers’ commands.
"He doesn't know the police are there," Pointer told the outlet. "He's backing out of the restaurant to get away, and when he opens the door, they never gave him the opportunity to comply with anything."
San Jose police didn't name the officer, only saying that they were a four-year veteran who had been placed on administrative leave while the department and Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office continue to investigate the shooting.
Joseph said the officer and their colleagues were “intending to stop a situation that could turn deadly” and didn’t “know all the things that we have all the luxury of knowing with hindsight."
"There's a lot of chaos," Joseph said. "There's a lot that the officers don't know. There's things that we in this room know today because a follow-up investigation provided more information."
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