Seattle - Two white Seattle police
officers on Sunday fatally shot a 30-year-old black mother who
had called them to investigate a burglary and whose family said
had deteriorating mental health.
Both Seattle Police Department officers opened fire on the
woman, named by family as Charleena Lyles, inside the apartment
building after they said she confronted them brandishing a
knife, police said. She died at the scene.
There were several children inside the apartment during
Sunday's incident, though they were uninjured, police said.
"There is no reason for her to be shot in front of her
babies," Monika Williams, the sister of the slain woman, told
reporters outside the apartment building. "She had mental health
issues that nobody is trying to address."
The incident comes four days after Lyles was released from
King County Jail following her arrest on June 5 for threatening
police officers with large kitchen scissors inside her small and
cluttered apartment, according to a police incident report filed
in Seattle Municipal Court.
During a tense standoff with officers, two of whom had
weapons drawn, the woman told police they were "devils and also
members of the KKK," a reference to the white-supremacy group,
the police report said of the earlier incident.
An officer was
able to convince the woman to drop the scissors and she was
arrested.
The report also said family members told police Lyles was
experiencing a sudden decline in her mental health condition and
had not behaved similarly in the past.
A police spokesperson did not immediately respond to a e-mail
asking whether the officers on June 5 were the same officers who
shot Lyles on Sunday, or whether the officers had received
training on how to properly handle a mental health or domestic
crisis.
The police statement said two officers were required to
respond because of "information pertaining to this address that
presented an increased risk to officers".
Both officers will be placed on paid administrative leave as
the department investigates the shooting, police said.
The Seattle Police Department has been implementing
court-ordered reforms since 2012 to address what a U.S. Justice
Department investigation found to be a pattern of excessive
force by officers that often arose during encounters with the
mentally ill or drug-addled suspects.
Federal investigators also found evidence of biased
policing.
Several mourners gathered outside the apartment complex
early on Sunday evening for a vigil and memorial for Lyles,
according to photos posted online by local media.
Photos of Lyles and her children were posted on black
plastic chairs and people brought placards that read Black Lives
Matter, a movement that grew out of protests against the police
killings of unarmed black men in a number of cities across the
United States.