San Francisco police surround Mario Woods before fatally shooting him, seen in a video screengrab shot on a mobile phone. "You'd see him around drinking a beer or smoking a cigarette, but he walked real slow and might've had a disability. He wasn't a threat to nobody." At 4.30pm on Wednesday, local time, just hours after two shooters had cut a deadly swath through a Christmas party in San Bernardino, Mr Woods was walking down Keith Street in Bayview when police surrounded him with their weapons drawn. Mr Woods, who reportedly had a previous conviction for gang involvement, was a suspect in an earlier stabbing on nearby Third Street, Sergeant Michael Andraychak told the San Francisco Chronicle. When police officers approached him on the street, he was still carrying what appeared to be a 15- to 20-centimetre knife, Sergeant Andraychak said.

The final moments of Mr Woods' life were captured by a man filming out the window of a public bus on Keith Street. In the footage, which was posted on Instagram and which has since been widely circulated on social media, it is unclear whether Mr Woods is armed with a knife. The footage shows Mr Woods standing against a wall and gesturing to at least six officers, who all have their guns pointed at him. As Mr Woods tries to walk down the path, away from four officers but towards one officer who steps towards him, the camera turns away and at least 15 gunshots can be heard ringing out. "Oh my God! Oh my God!" a shocked female bus passenger can be heard yelling.

Another video, which appears to show the same shooting from another angle, has been shared widely on Twitter. Sergeant Andraychak said Mr Woods had refused to drop his knife, and the officers had tried other tactics to disarm and arrest him. He said the officers deployed a less lethal beanbag round and used pepper spray, but Mr Woods did not drop his knife. He said Mr Woods tried to walk away and an officer moved in front of him to prevent him from leaving, but Mr Woods, apparently still armed, continued to walk towards the officer. "At this point, fearing serious injury or death, officers fired their department-issued handguns at the suspect," Sergeant Andraychak said.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Mr Woods was convicted in 2010 of charges stemming from an armed robbery of a pool hall patron in San Francisco, with a "sentencing enhancement for using a firearm and participating in a street gang, the Oakdale Mob in Bayview-Hunters Point". He was released from prison in September last year. Many people have reacted with outrage to the footage of Mr Woods' killing. Public Defender Jeff Adachi told San Francisco television station KQED that it did not look as if the officers were in imminent danger. "I understand that officers are trained to kill, but if we are going to expect ordinary citizens to only shoot and kill people where they believe they are in danger of being killed themselves, we should hold police officers to a similar standard," he said.

"Based on what we see in this video, it does not look like the officer who fired the fatal shots was in immediate danger of being killed."



The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California released a statement calling for "justice for Mario Woods". The organisation said the video "does not appear to show the imminent danger or substantial risk of death or serious injury that would permit the use of a firearm under SFPD [San Francisco Police Department] policy". Mr Smith, the resident who knew Mr Woods, said he went to the scene of the shooting early on Thursday morning where he saw Mr Woods' mother crying and looking at the blood stain on the pavement where her son had died the night before. "You almost made it home, Mario," Mr Smith said he heard her say.