There is no doubt that Lowe deserved to be held accountable for his crimes but did police have the right to take Lowe's life?
Los Angeles, CA — As TFTP reported last week, shortly after the video was released of the murder of Tyre Nichols, another video showed police chasing down a double amputee as he crawled away from them before officers opened fire and put ten rounds in the man. That man was 36-year-old Anthony Lowe.
At the time, police failed to release video of the actual shooting, but that has since changed. This week, the department released surveillance footage of Lowe's last moments alive.
Lowe was no angel, and the video below shows that he deserved to be removed from society for his actions last month after he stabbed a completely innocent person in the chest in a random act of violence.
There is no doubt that Lowe deserved to be held accountable for his crimes. The question that remains, however, is about the role police played in his death. Did they have the right to take Lowe's life?
According to police, they responded to a report of a man in a wheelchair with a knife who stabbed a bystander earlier that day. Video now confirms that Lowe walked up to a complete stranger and stabbed him in the chest. That person was hospitalized with a collapsed lung and broken ribs.
When police arrived on the scene, they found Lowe in his wheelchair holding a foot-long butcher knife.
Moments later Lowe would be dead, having been shot ten times by two Huntington police officers. Cellphone video captured part of the interaction but not the shooting. The newly released video captures the entire shooting.
“Something is not right with this situation,” Lowe's sister, Tatiana Jackson said. “My daughter is 4, and she adores him. It’s going to break my heart to let her know. She does not understand. She was looking for him, like, ‘Is he hiding from me?’ I can’t bring myself to tell her that he will never come back again.”
Police released a statement claiming Lowe attempted to throw the knife at them twice which gave them no choice but to shoot.
Huntington Park Police Officers responded to a stabbing call at 3:40 p.m. on the 2400 block of Slauson Avenue, Huntington Park. Upon arrival they contacted a male adult stabbing victim who gave the description of a Male Black Adult suspect in a wheelchair and his last seen direction of travel. Assisting Huntington Park Police Officers checked the area indicated by the victim and located the suspect near the 1900 block of Slauson Avenue, Huntington Park.
When Huntington Park Officers attempted to detain the suspect, the suspect retrieved a 12” butcher knife from his person and threatened them by attempting to throw the knife at the officers. The suspect was tased at least twice by Huntington Park Officers but the deployment of the taser was ineffective. The suspect attempted to throw the butcher knife at the officers again, at which time an officer involved shooting occurred.
The suspect was struck by gunfire in the upper torso. He was treated on scene by Los Angeles County Fire Department paramedics and pronounced dead.
A butcher knife was recovered at the scene.
As the video shows, Lowe had the knife raised above his head twice and looked like he was about to throw it. Attorneys for the family claim police had no reason to kill Lowe that day and could have used less-than-lethal weapons.
“This was an unnecessary killing. It never should have happened,” Annee Della Donna, the Lowe family’s attorney, said.
“They didn’t think twice. A double amputee who was hobbling away,” Donna said. “The police could have stood back 75 feet and hit him with the low-impact devices they have in the back of their vehicle.”
But police used bullets instead.
Lieutenant Hugo Reynaga told the LA Times that officers fired at Lowe “somewhere around 10 times. ... We recovered 10 or 11 casings at the scene. I don’t know which of those actually hit him.”
This instance, while tragic, is not as cut and dry as many of the cases the Free Thought Project reports. Lowe clearly presented a threat to the community and showed that he had no problem attempting to kill a completely innocent person who had no relation to him.
But the situation changes when he is surrounded by three men in body armor who have multiple tools at their disposal to deal with situations like these. Could have Lowe's life been spared here? What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.
Newly released video:
Video of Lowe's victim speaking out:
