Man with machete killed by officers
Two officers on administrative leave after a shooting leaves one man dead - 13 On Your Side's Arlette Yousif reports
What came in to dispatch as a burglary call Tuesday afternoon turned into an officer-involved shooting.
The Yuma Police Department (YPD) says when officers arrived, they were met with a man holding a machete.
YPD says officers tried to deescalate the situation on 5th Avenue and West 9th Street, but a man at the home refused to drop his weapon after several commands and even charged at officers.
YPD has identified the man as 34-year-old Felipe De Jesus Herrera Jr.
“So when officers arrived, he had a machete in his hand. They gave multiple, multiple verbal commands for him to drop the weapon. He refused to drop the weapon. They kept trying to deescalate the situation. An electronic control device, a less-lethal device, was deployed, it was not effective on him," says Yuma Police Department Sergeant Lori Franklin.
Sgt. Franklin says Herrera Jr then charged at one of the officers who had a gun, resulting in shots fired from YPD.
“When he came forward to the officers… basically he charged at the officers, that’s when lethal force was used,” explains Sgt. Franklin.
Herrera Jr was pronounced dead at the scene.
A witness says Herrera Jr lived at the home where the shooting happened.
Lilianna Velez says her neighbor was at her home minutes before police arrived saying someone had broken into his home, called 911, and waited for YPD to arrive.
Moments later she heard what happened.
“I didn’t know when they came, but I heard like a commotion outside and that’s when I heard like, like yelling from the officers. And they were just yelling like ‘what’s your name?’ you know, ‘drop your weapon’ and, or ‘drop your knife’ and whenever they didn’t get any results from that, I saw [the officer] shoot the taser. And they still were yelling to him to like drop the knife… ‘sir’ you know, what’s ‘calm down, calm down’ and then a few seconds later and then there was like some fires,” says Lilianna Velez.
It's still unclear whether a burglary actually happened.
Per department protocol, the two officers involved in the shooting are on paid administrative leave pending an investigation.
Both have been with the Yuma Police Department for six years.
