Police Brutality / Individual record
Charly Leundeu Keunang
Charly Leundeu Keunang, 43, a Cameroonian man living unhoused in Los Angeles, was shot six times by LAPD officers on Skid Row on March 1, 2015.
- Record ID
- PB-115
- Incident date
- March 1, 2015
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- Los Angeles, CA
- Agency
- Los Angeles Police Department
- Category
- Fatal on-duty police shooting
- Age (reported)
- 43
What happened
Officers responded to reports of a robbery near a tent on downtown Los Angeles's Skid Row and confronted Charly Leundeu Keunang, also known locally as Africa. A struggle followed involving several officers, a Taser and attempts to control him. Bystander footage of the encounter spread widely and fueled demonstrations over deadly policing of unhoused residents. An autopsy showed six gunshot wounds, including two contact wounds to his chest. Investigators said he reached for an officer's holstered firearm during the struggle, a contention reviewed through body-camera footage. The loss of Keunang's life and the sudden escalation of force prompted renewed scrutiny of LAPD tactics in the Skid Row community.
Investigation & findings
The Los Angeles Police Commission ruled the shooting within force policy in 2016, and the district attorney declined prosecution based on its assessment of the holstered-gun struggle. Those determinations are official conclusions and should be attributed rather than treated as independent proof that safer interventions were impossible.
Washington Post Fatal Force v2; 2015–2024
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- 194
- Race code in source
- B
- Race source method
- not_available
- Gender (source)
- male
- Armed status (source)
- unarmed
- Flee status (source)
- not
- Agency IDs (source)
- 38
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Additional source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Fatal Force v2 — fatal on-duty police shootings, 2015–2024The Washington Post · Dataset
- Fatal Force methodology and data limitationsThe Washington Post · Methodology