By Jakob Rodgers
Bay Area News Group
OAKLAND, Calif. — Oakland police released footage Wednesday of a deadly police shooting in mid-July, when two of its officers opened fire on a man who was wielding knives affixed to long metal poles in the city’s Fruitvale District.
The agency’s decision to make the videos public comes almost exactly a month after the encounter, which marked the third shooting involving Oakland police this year and at least the seventh since 2023. Two of this year’s three police shootings have been fatal.
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In releasing the videos, the Oakland Police Department said for the first time that the person killed appeared to be Jose Angel Castillo, a man who was born in November 1982 . The agency added, however, that the Alameda County coroner’s office has yet to confirm the man’s identity, and it asked for the public’s help in identifying his next of kin.
The encounter began around 2 p.m. on July 13, when officers with the California Highway Patrol asked Oakland police for help with a man they encountered at a homeless encampment off 42nd Avenue near San Leandro Street, along an embankment overlooking Highway 185.
Video snippets captured from two highway patrol officers’ cameras showed the man initially standing at a homeless encampment while holding a hammer and two nearly identical homemade weapons, each of them made with a knife affixed to the end of pole.
The man, wearing blue jeans, a black T-shirt and a pink hat, initially dropped the hammer when told to do so by the officers. But he refused the officers’ orders to also drop the bladed weapons — instead waving and pointing with them, and at one point slinging them over his shoulders.
The highway patrol’s video snippet ended with the man still holding the blades and ambling down an embankment to the highway while an officer pointed a gun at him.
“We’ve got a subject holding two knives, one at gunpoint,” one of the highway patrol officers said over his radio. Around that time, someone with the highway patrol asked an Oakland police dispatcher for backup, noting the man was being “aggressive.”
Other, unredacted body camera footage depicted an encounter that lasted less than 90 seconds from when most Oakland officers arrived on scene until the moment when the man was shot.
One officer immediately drew his gun while confronting the man at the intersection of E. 12th Street and 41st Avenue, repeatedly ordering him to “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!”
The man — holding one bladed weapon in each hand — responded by walking down 41st Avenue away from a growing mass of officers, which quickly swelled from just a couple to at least 10. At one point, three people on sidewalk of 41st Avenue could be seen scrambling away as the man and the officers approached them. The group of officers included at least two plainclothes officers wearing bulletproof vests, who arrived in an unmarked car shortly before the shooting.
About a minute after most Oakland officers arrived, the man backed into the parking lot of a strip mall near International Boulevard and appeared to fidget with the weapons and a black backpack he had been carrying.
Around that time, multiple officers fired stun guns — the electric shocks of which could be heard lasting about four or five seconds.
The man then swung one of the bladed weapons in the direction of officers while standing about two parking spaces away from them, at which point at least seven gunshots could be heard on the video footage and the man could be seen collapsing face-first to the pavement. A break of one or two seconds followed, before an officer fired a final shot as the man lay on the ground.
The man laid face down for about 40 seconds before officers approached him, handcuffed him and then flipped him over to provide CPR.
In a narrated video compilation that accompanied the release of the raw body camera footage, the Oakland Police Department said two of its officers fired their guns during the encounter. It also said that at least one of its officers and at least one officer with the California Highway Patrol fired stun guns at the man as well.
The California Highway Patrol has not yet released unedited footage from its officers during the encounter.
On May 8, police shot a man suspected of dragging one officer and pinning another against a parked vehicle while fleeing a traffic stop in the 1200 block of 9th Avenue , along the city’s Eastlake district.
Less than two weeks earlier, on April 27, Oakland police fatally shot a man after department leaders say he pointed a gun at officers around the 1800 block of 89th Avenue.
Check back for updates to this developing story.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.
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