He didn’t use his real name or talk about his past – about how he ended up here, in a little orange tent on the sidewalk – and that suited his Skid Row neighbours just fine. Everyone had their secrets.

Some days he went by the name Africa, other days it was Cameroon. He didn’t talk much, but when he did it was usually about the weather, or basketball, or the latest news from this wretched corner of downtown Los Angeles.

“On Skid Row you don’t talk about the past. You don’t talk about the things that got you here,” said Mecca Harper, a friend and neighbour of the 39-year-old man police shot dead on Sunday.

On Tuesday, as people prayed at the site – now an improvised shrine – as protesters marched on the police commissioner’s office, and as a video of the encounter continued to attract global attention, Africa’s secrets emerged.

He was initially reported by news outlets to be a French national named Charley Saturmin Robinet – though that has since been denied by authorities – and he served 15 years in a US federal prison for robbing a bank to fund acting classes, according to records and law enforcement sources cited by the Los Angeles Times.

He was part of a gang accused of robbing a Wells Fargo branch in Thousand Oaks, 40 miles north-west of downtown LA, in 2000. When employees were slow in handing over the money, Robinet pistol-whipped one of the tellers, authorities said.

The gang led police on a chase through Ventura County that ended after the getaway vehicle struck a police car and ran over a spike strip. Robinet attempted to flee on foot but was caught with $33,500 on him, prosecutors told the paper. He was convicted of conspiracy, armed bank robbery and brandishing a firearm.

He told investigators in a tape-recorded statement that he wanted to cover the cost of acting classes at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.

“A French citizen who came to the US to make his mark in show biz will play a supporting role in prison,” the LA Times reported in a brief story at the time, calling him a “star crossed robber”.

A brutal and ironic end

If that identity is confirmed, Sunday’s shooting marked a brutal and ironic end to a Hollywood dream: destitution, death and posthumous fame in a viral video.

According to federal records, Robinet was released in May.

The revelations gave a dramatic twist to a shooting which an onlooker caught on camera and uploaded to Facebook, drawing millions of views and reigniting controversy over police use of lethal force in Los Angeles and other cities.

The video showed six police officers grappling with a man who was flailing his limbs. A voice shouted “Drop the gun” several times, then five shots rang out, after which the man lay still.

Police chief Charlie Beck told a press conference on Monday that his officers were responding to a reported robbery and that the man had “forcibly grabbed” an officer’s pistol. He asked the public to withhold judgment pending the investigation’s outcome.

On Tuesday morning a few dozen activists from Black Lives Matter and other campaign groups gathered at the orange tent, which was strewn with flowers and other tributes, and chanted: “They can’t kill Africa.”

Until the report of his real name and background, the dead man’s identity remained a mystery to those who considered him a friend and neighbour.

“He was quiet. Didn’t have a wife or girlfriend, didn’t talk much. I think he was kind of lonesome,” said John Soto, 48, who sleeps by a wall about 50ft (15 metres) from where Robinet had his tent.

“We’d talk about sports. He liked the Lakers.”

Soto said he smoked cannabis in his tent but shunned harder drugs. “Out of all of us here he was probably the most honest guy.”

David Chavarri, 50, said he avoided trouble. “He smoked weed, that’s it. He wouldn’t really talk about his background.” Chavarri thought the accent was from Jamaica.

Their late friend was depressed, opined another man, who declined to give his name. “He didn’t like America. He was saving up his money to go back to his country.”

Harper, who runs a bodega a few yards from Robinet’s tent, said he helped to guard it and used to escort her cousin to safety after finishing shifts at 3am. “He was a nice man. A humble gentleman. Even though he lived in a tent, that was his residence.”

His reticence about his background was common in Skid Row, she said. “Here you talk about the now, not about painful things that happened in the past.”

Marcus Butler, the security manager at the nearby Midnight Mission shelter, where Robinet used to eat, agreed. “Usually the past is not something that you can be proud of. Same reason why on the street you use nicknames. There’s a fear of people knowing you. Maybe because of problems with the law. Or paranoia.”

After moving to the area a few months ago, Robinet reportedly told some of his new neighbours that he was recently released from a mental institution.

‘He’d just sit in his tent doing his own thing’

Transitioning from a regimented life in jail to the freewheeling chaos of San Pedro Street would have been difficult. His chosen spot abutted a public toilet and a ficus tree – the only patch of nature on an otherwise bleak vista of concrete, tarpaulins, shopping carts and debris.

Shelters and clinics offer free food, showers and medical treatment, which is what draws and keeps the homeless to a zone officially termed Central City East, but otherwise known as Skid Row.

By day the homeless are supposed to dismantle tents and clear the sidewalk, a rule many ignore unless the police show up. The man they knew as Africa chafed at this daily chore, said Ceola “Dice” Waddell, 50, who sells cigarettes from an armchair just up the street. “He’d just sit in his tent doing his blow, doing his thing, minding his own business. He didn’t like taking it down.”

At some point late on Tuesday morning his tent vanished, leaving just the shrine. Half a dozen people huddled by the pavement shrugged when asked who took it.

“Who knows, it’s just gone,” said one man, smoking a cigarette stub. “Africa doesn’t need it no more.”