Timeline of Fatal Oakland Police Shooting and Emergency Response

Update, 2:30 p.m. Friday: After studying police dispatch tapes and reviewing a citizen's video of Thursday morning's fatal officer-involved shooting near Oakland's Grand Lake District, we've put together a tentative timeline of events before and just after the deadly encounter between a police officer and a man who reportedly attacked her with a bicycle chain.

Oakland police say the officer was investigating a report of an early-morning assault in the 200 block of MacArthur Boulevard when the suspect in that attack appeared on the scene. The man struck the officer with a chain, police say, after which she shot and killed him. Neither the officer nor the suspect have been identified.

The timeline of the emergency response after the shooting has become a subject of interest because some at the scene accused police of not acting quickly enough to aid the mortally wounded suspect. One person in the video -- described more fully in an earlier update -- says repeatedly that officers had left the dying man unattended for 20 minutes.

Oakland police dispatch traffic and the video appear to show the response was considerably faster than that.

Police dispatch audio captures at least three calls for emergency medical response to the scene within five minutes of the shooting, including one made immediately after the injured officer was transported from the scene in a fellow officer's police car. The video shows officers attending to the suspect about six minutes after the shooting.

The video -- see details below -- does not include a time stamp. But a fragment of a police radio message broadcast after the shooting can also be heard on the video. (We've embedded the clips of the message below.) That's what we've used to estimate how long after the shooting the video begins.

We're calling this a tentative judgment because we can't be sure that the police audio, from Broadcastify.com, is complete. The sound quality is often poor, and the communications occasionally sound fragmented. However, the times we estimate for the shooting and the appearance of medical personnel appear consistent with those in other published accounts.

Here's our edited version of the police dispatch audio, which begins with an Oakland dispatcher broadcasting an advisory about an early-morning assault at 255 MacArthur Boulevard and then picks up with the moment the police officer involved in the later confrontation with the suspect calls for help. We've edited out about five minutes of extraneous radio traffic between the advisory and the officer's emergency call; the audio is unedited from the moment the emergency call is broadcast.

Here's the timeline:

6:35 a.m.: Time of reported assault at 255 MacArthur Boulevard.
8:30-8:31: Oakland police dispatcher broadcasts alert about earlier assault: "Units, be advised of a 245 [assault with a deadly weapon] with a bike chain." Advisory describes suspect and concludes, "For officer safety -- he has been armed with a knife in the past." Dispatcher gives time as 8:31 a.m.
8:36-8:37: Officer broadcasts emergency calls for help: "Code 33! I need ... I need Code 3 [emergency] medical! I've been struck in the head by the suspect. MacArthur and Van Buren." The dispatcher asks her twice to repeat her location. The officer then advises, "The suspect needs an ambulance, too. I've still got him at gunpoint."
8:38-8:39: First responding police officer arrives on the scene. He repeats call for emergency medical assistance, and dispatcher advises him that "Code 3 medical is en route."
8:39: Police officer on scene reports he will transport injured officer to hospital.
8:41: Another officer repeats call for emergency medical response for suspect: "... Need Code 3 Medical for a male black ... not conscious, not breathing."
8:42: Approximate start of citizen video showing officers tending to wounded suspect.
8:43-8:44: Officer broadcasts message beginning "Now that this ... getting this stabilized, a message heard both in dispatch audio and on video.
8:45-8:46 Video shows firefighters arriving on scene.
8:46: Police officer advises dispatcher that "medical just pulled up."

Here are the clips of an officer broadcasting a message beginning, "Now that this ... getting this stabilized," as they're heard on both the dispatch audio and the citizen video.

Update, 10:55 a.m. Friday: The screen shot at right is from a video KQED News obtained, taken from the scene of the shooting shot some time after the fatal shooting (the exact time of the video is unknown).

In the video, the victim lies motionless in the middle of MacArthur Boulevard, just north of Van Buren Avenue, while one police officer begins performing CPR. He is soon assisted by a second officer. At least a half-dozen other officers can be seen in the video setting up the crime scene. CPR is performed for roughly 3½  minutes until three Oakland Fire Department personnel arrive, at which time the video cuts off.

At around the 30-second mark of the video, one woman in a small crowd gathered about 30 feet away from the victim can be heard shouting, “They didn’t do CPR, they didn’t do anything yet. He’s been lying there for 20 minutes.”

A few minutes later, a second woman yells, “It’s too late, anybody can see that. You’re all more worried about your officer than this man on the street.”

KQED News has decided not to post the video due to its graphic nature.

Update, 3:45 p.m. Thursday

At a press conference this afternoon, Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent offered an account of today's officer-involved shooting.

Whent said police received a report early this morning of a trespasser who'd assaulted a resident  in the garage of an apartment building on the 200 block of MacArthur Boulevard. Whent said police arrived on the scene about 6:45 a.m. but couldn't locate the suspect.

An officer from the day shift then came on duty and took a report from the resident who was allegedly assaulted. After the officer completed the report, she began to drive away from the scene when the suspect walked in front of her vehicle. The officer got out of her car and was immediately assaulted by the suspect, Whent said.

The suspect was "holding a metal chain and swinging it at the officer," causing multiple lacerations, Whent said. "The suspect continued to advance, swinging the chain at the officer. The officer drew her firearm and fired  at the suspect, striking him."

The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene and the officer, an 18-year veteran, was transported to the hospital, where she was treated for head injuries and is in stable condition, Whent said.

He said the department has body-cam video of the incident, and that it was too early to say yet whether the shooting was justified.

When asked why the officer didn't use her taser instead of shooting the suspect, Whent said that would have contradicted protocol.

"People that are armed with weapons, we recommend a taser if you’ve got a lethal option behind you, so that in the event the taser fails, you have somebody with a lethal option," he said. "This was the only officer that was on scene at the time confronting somebody with a weapon, so she used her firearm."

Neither the name of the officer nor the deceased suspect have been released yet.

As you can read in more detail in our original post below, at least one witness to the aftermath of the shooting was disturbed by what she characterized as police indifference to the wounded man as officers gathered around their injured colleague.

"No one was doing anything," said Nayomi Munaweera . "He was twitching and bleeding from his mouth. There were maybe like three of us civilians who were around and trying to figure out in those few seconds whether we should go and help him or not. As that was happening, a bunch of cops came and told us to back up and get away."

Chief Whent said at his press conference that officers are obligated to respond to the injuries of suspects. "Immediately, aid was requested for both of them," he said, referring to the officer and the man who eventually expired.

Original post

An Oakland police officer this morning shot and killed a man after he attacked her, police said today.

At about 8:40 a.m., the officer responded to an assault call near Lake Merritt on MacArthur Boulevard, encountering a male suspect, OPD spokeswoman Johanna Watson said. She said the man struck the officer multiple times in the head and face with a metal object. The officer then shot the man, who was later pronounced dead at the scene.

The officer was taken to a hospital to be treated for head trauma, according to Watson. She did not release the condition of the officer. The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that a witness saw the officer "bleeding heavily from her face."

The Chronicle also said: "Acquaintances of the dead suspect, who were at the scene but did not want to be identified, said he suffered from an unspecified mental illness."

One witness to the shooting's immediate aftermath said on video today that police gathered around the injured officer while ignoring the wounded suspect.

Nayomi Munaweera, a local writer, discussed the incident in a video interview with someone who identified himself as being with the Anti Police-Terror Project. Munaweera said she was walking up MacArthur when she heard gunshots. When she came upon the scene, she saw an African-American man lying on his stomach, bleeding from the mouth. At the same time, she said, a white, female police officer was sitting on the pavement, with blood on her face.

"There were two or three police officers around her," Munaweera said. "There was no one around the man."

When asked if the man appeared to be dead, Munaweera said, "No, he was definitely alive. No one was doing anything. He was twitching and bleeding from his mouth. There were maybe like three of us civilians who were around and trying to figure out in those few seconds whether we should go and help him or not. As that was happening, a bunch of cops came and told us to back up and get away."

She goes on to say: "They finally did CPR, but it was like, too late. A bunch of blood came out. It took about 15-20 minutes before anyone administered to him."

It's unclear if police had attended to the man before Munaweera came upon the scene.

Munaweera also said she saw a bike chain by the man's side.

OPD is holding a press conference now to discuss the shooting, the sixth officer-involved shooting in Oakland this year, four of which have been fatal.

In response to the shooting, activists have called for a 5 p.m. protest in Oakland.

Bay City News contributed to this report.