Less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door, police shot Yong Yang in his parents’ Koreatown home while he was holding a knife during a bipolar episode.
Parents in Los Angeles’ Koreatown called for mental health help in the middle of their son’s bipolar episode this month. Clinical personnel showed up — and so did police shortly after.
Police fatally shot Yong Yang, 40, who had a knife in his hand, less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door to his parents’ apartment where he had locked himself in, newly released bodycam video shows.
Now the parents of Yang, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around 15 years ago, have told NBC News exclusively that they are disputing part of the account captured on bodycam, in which police recount a clinician’s saying Yang was violent before the shooting on May 2.
We had to ride out a number of suicidal episodes and drug overdoses over COVID. I have PTSD from childhood abuse that flared up during the lockdown and PTSD from previous encounters with the police (I was tased and arrested during a welfare check about a decade ago).
Thankfully my gf is good at holding space but it was still very stressful for both of us. And there were a number of times I would have gone to the hospital if I had any faith in the system.