According to a statement from the Sheriff’s Office, the King County Sheriff’s Office received “multiple calls” just before midnight about gunshots in a neighborhood in the city of Burien. When the deputies arrived, they say they found that a homeowner had fired a “warning shot” in response to a man, later identified as Le, approaching him with what he thought was “a knife or some sort of sharp object.” The homeowner said the man had previously been chasing his friend.
The Sheriff’s Office said at the time that the homeowner fled inside, and Le pounded on the door and “stabbed” it with the sharp object, yelling that he was “The Creator.” They also said Le did not comply with deputy orders, did not drop the object, and that tasers “were not effective.”
Deputy Cesar Molina then shot Le three times, Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Cindi West later told Seattle Weekly. Le later died of his injuries at a hospital.
Le’s family and community are grappling with questions about his death and the narrative coming from law enforcement.
About a week after the shooting, the sheriff’s office revealed that the “sharp object” in Le’s hand turned out to be a pen.
“I’m so angry,” said his father Sunny Le, “I want to know what happened to my son.”
Descriptions of Le as an aggressive assailant don’t match up with the person his teachers and classmates once knew.
“I could tell you 100 people I would have imagined this happening to before him,” Career Link director and teacher Curt Peterson told the Times. “If we had a discipline file on Tommy it would be completely empty. He was the sweetest kid in the world. He didn’t have an aggressive bone in his body.”
A school spokesman told the New York Daily News that Le was part of a close group of students and had never shown any signs of mental illness and was never in any trouble.
King County Medical Examiner’s Office are conducting toxicology reports to see if Le was under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
The shooting is under an investigation by the Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Unit. Deputy Molina is on administrative leave.
Linh Thai, director of Seattle’s Vietnamese Community Leadership Institute, told Seattle Weekly last week that while the community “has a tradition of respecting the law” and trusting the police, they are struggling with the news of the fatal shooting.
Source: huffingtonpost