Police are investigating a shooting that left a man dead in Fremont Tuesday.
His family said it’s a failure of the mental health system, but the shooter’s family said it was a matter of self-defense.
Fremont police were called to Lindenwood Street and found a man dead in a driveway. The crime scene appeared to link two neighbors who live across from each other.
“There is a lot more work to do for investigators to determine what led up to this and then what actually took place,” said Ricardo Cortes of the Fremont Police Department.
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The victim’s family said he was married and had a 1-year-old.
But just in the past four days, he had serious mental health issues in need of psychiatric care.
They said they even called police to get him help, but said they were turned away.
“Cops came out twice. Both times they said he was not aggressive; he doesn’t qualify as a threat and they went back on both occasions,” said Karthik Manivannan, the victim’s cousin. “We tried really hard to get him mental services.”
He ended up being shot and killed across the street from his house.
The suspect’s stepson, Yue You, said, “tell everyone, this is self-defense.”
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You said he pulled up to grab something from his mom’s house when the man he’s never seen before started shouting at him in his car.
“He told me like 10 times, ‘I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill you’ and I really believed that because he [was standing over me] I got scared, very scared and I ran away,” said You.
Scared, he took off, but immediately feared for his 70-year-old stepdad who was in the garage.
He said the man shouted the same thing at his stepdad—-who shot and killed him.
“To anyone, if you have a gun and someone’s threatening your life, you definitely shoot him,” said You. “What are you going to do, especially if you’re a 70-year-old man.”
Police won’t say yet what the motive was.
The victim’s family said it all could have been avoided if the mental health system would have taken him in.
“At the end of the day, I feel the system is lacking in handling such cases,” said Manivannan.
The victim will be identified by the coroner.
The suspect was arrested and will be booked into jail, as detectives will continue going through evidence explaining what happened.
