A double amputee with a knife was shot and killed by police near Los Angeles on Jan.26. Police did not immediately release the victim’s name. The man has since been identified by his family as 36-year-old Anthony Lowe.

A viral video circulating on social media purportedly shows the moments before the shooting death of Lowe, whose legs both had been amputated at the knees following an accident last year. In the video, he seems to be holding a knife, and there are now questions about whether police used excessive or justified force. The incident took place in the Southern California city of Huntington Park.

The video was taken by a passerby and showed Lowe out of his wheelchair, trying to get away from police using his arms to propel himself along the ground.

A spokesperson for the family said Lowe had been undergoing a mental health crisis when he was shot to death by Huntington Park police.

According to the Huntington Park Police Department report, police got a call that a man was stabbed by another man in a wheelchair. They responded and found a victim suffering from “a life-threatening stab wound resulting in a collapsed lung and internal bleeding,” the statement said.

Officers said when they arrived on the scene, they found Lowe with a 12-inch butcher knife.

Huntington Park, California police officers shoot dead Anthony Lowe Jr, a double amputee man who tried to run away from them on the stumps of his legs. The cops said they were afraid Lowe would throw the knife he had at them. pic.twitter.com/y4FjqED4Hy

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) January 31, 2023

In a statement, the department said officers tried to taser Lowe twice but to no avail, and when Lowe continued to threaten them with the knife, they fatally shot him. Lowe was shot in the upper torso and was pronounced dead on the scene, CBS News reported.

The stabbing victim was taken to a local hospital and remains in critical condition, according to HPPD.

https://twitter.com/dennis_k_g/status/1620492081327374342?s=61&t=hChl0I6Mlu2dmMAkgzu6cQ

The involved officers have been placed on paid administrative leave pending ongoing investigations by the HPPD, the sheriff’s department’s Homicide Bureau and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, CNN reported.

“The way they killed my son, they murdered my son in a wheelchair with no legs,” Dorothy Lowe, Anthony Lowe’s mother, said at a news conference on Jan. 30. “So they do need to do something about it, because I do I want justice for my son.”

“There can be no justification for killing Anthony, and we’re here to stand with his family and his community to fight for justice for Anthony,” said Cliff Smith, an organizer with the Coalition for Community Control Over the Police.

Screenshot, CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthony-lowe-jr-double-amputee-huntington-park-police-shoot-dead-activists-justice/