Bodycam shows LASD Deputies fatally shoot man with machetes at Lancaster grocery store
By: Dramatic body camera video has been released of a deadly confrontation involving sheriff's deputies and a man wielding two machetes at a grocery store in Lancaster.
Video released by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department shows the deputies repeatedly warn the man to drop the bladed weapons as he stands outside the store, and then retreats inside as customers are warned to get down.
The deputies used foam projectiles and Tasers multiple times but were unable to subdue the man as he was wearing a thick jacket that seemed to protect him from the non-lethal devices. He also used a machete to cut the Taser wires.
Finally, the man is heard declaring "You're starting to piss me off" and then he raises a machete above his head and starts charging at the deputies. The released portion of the video freezes there with the sound of multiple gunshots.
The department says the man, identified as Jonathan Scott foster, 38, was brought to a hospital and pronounced dead there.
The incident started hours earlier, when a man with a machete attacked a convenience store clerk in the 43500 block of 20th Street West in Lancaster. The clerk tried to block the machete and was slashed in her hand, and later treated at a hospital.
When deputies showed up, the man was gone, but they canvassed the area and warned local businesses to be on the lookout for a man with a machete.
By 9:30 a.m. they got a call from the grocery store in the same area about a man with a machete in his backpack.
When they showed up, he was outside the store with one machete, and then later pulled out a second from his jacket.
Deputies were seen on bodycam repeatedly trying to coax the man to put the weapon down, but he refused.
After he put one blade away and entered the store, they repeatedly used nonlethal means, until the deadly confrontation unfolded.