Sacramento police release video of officer shooting a stabbing suspect inside apartment
The Sacramento Police Department on Thursday released video of an encounter with a suspect who allegedly stabbed a man and was holding the victim at knifepoint before an officer fired a rifle, killing the suspect.
Michael Andre Wright of Sacramento was shot during the encounter with police last week at an apartment along Park City Court in the city’s Pocket neighborhood. Wright, 52, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The man held at knifepoint suffered multiple stab wounds and was taken by ambulance to a hospital. Police said the victim survived and has since been released from the hospital.
The department released an edited video with narration of the police shooting as it unfolded. Sacramento police also released unedited video from three officer body cameras, a police dashboard car camera, a police drone and 10 audio recordings of dispatchers speaking to 911 callers and officers.
About 7:45 p.m. Wednesday, police dispatchers received 911 calls about a disturbance. One frightened woman told a dispatcher in a downstairs apartment, “They’re arguing downstairs about something, they’re screaming and everything.” The 911 caller also said she heard “banging” like furniture was being thrown.
Another 911 caller, identifying himself as “Michael Wright,” told a dispatcher that several family members were being held hostage in an apartment on Park City Court. He claimed that his girlfriend was being raped there, and his mother and nephew were being held captive as well.
A dispatcher also received a 911 call from a man inside the apartment, saying he was being stabbed by another man. That 911 caller also said that his attacker was armed with a knife and a gun.
He told the dispatcher that the suspect was hitting him and had a knife on his chest. He said the suspect was claiming that the victim had his girlfriend hostage, but the suspect’s claim was not true.
“He’s cutting me! He’s killing me with a knife,” the victim screamed to the dispatcher. “Send an ambulance and police. I’m bleeding, please come now.”
The dispatcher told the frantic victim, “I have help on the way sir, OK? I have help on the way.”
Police body camera video shows officers as they arrived at the apartment complex to find the apartment where the reported assault was occurring. The officers at the scene could hear a male screaming.
One of the officers circled the apartment and looked inside through a sliding glass door. In the video, the officer can be heard telling dispatchers that he could see one man on the ground with a lot of blood and another man above him.
Police said the suspect at that point was “actively assaulting the victim with a knife.”
The officer looking through the glass door said, “Hey guys, we gotta do something. We gotta do something.” He told the other officers he didn’t want to shoot through the glass door.
“He’s got a very large knife, too,” the officer said a few seconds before he fired three shots from a rifle at the armed suspect.
The officer is then heard in the video telling the victim to duck and get on the ground. Other officers joined, telling the victim to get move away from the knife-wielding man and get out of the apartment.
The video shows the victim exiting the apartment. The officer who fired the rifle then asked the victim, “Are you OK? I see you’re stabbed. You didn’t get hit by anything, right?”
The officers sent a police drone with a camera to go into the apartment to make sure nobody else, other than the suspect hit by gunfire, remained in the apartment. Shards of glass flew in the air as the drone entered the apartment through the now opened glass door.
Scattered papers, cardboard boxes and other belongings covered most of the apartment’s living room, the police drone video showed. Wright, mortally wounded, was on the ground hunched over directly next to the closed front door.
Officers determined the apartment was safe to enter and approached Wright. The officers found a large knife near Wright, police said. The officers say they did not find anyone else inside the apartment.
The police shooting remains under investigation, and the department says additional videos will be released as the investigation continues.
