SAITAMA (TR) – A video has emerged that shows the standoff last week between a knife-wielding man and a pair police officers in Saitama City before he was fatally shot.
At around 2 p.m. on May 28, police working off a tip arrived at a street in Minuma Ward and found the man collapsed. However, the man — later identified as Kosaku Kamada — rose to his feet upon their arrival and picked up the knife.
The video was shot by a person positioned on a balcony overlooking the street. In the clip, which lasts two minutes and 17 seconds, the officers are seen pointing their weapons down the street. “I’ll really shoot — put down the knife,” one of the officers said.
After one officer fires a warning shot straight up, Kamada, wearing a t-shirt, shorts and sandals, charges in their direction, disappearing from the view of the camera.
Each officer then shot at Kamada, with one bullet striking him in the abdomen. After being arrested on suspicion of interfering with the duties of a public servant, he died at a hospital, police said previously.
“So dangerous, so dangerous!” the person filming the clip can be heard saying. “I think they are going to shoot him!” After that, several shots ring out.
“The use of the pistol was appropriate,” a representative of the Saitama Prefectural Police was quoted by J-Cast News (May 29).
