A newly released video is shedding light on the moment leading up to a police shooting inside a Morgan Hill Safeway last month.
The video, edited by the Morgan Hill Police Department, starts with officers responding to a disturbance inside the grocery store on April 18 just after midnight.
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WATCH HEREPolice said 40-year-old Sjaun Hillman from Van Nuys walked into the store with a large kitchen knife. He ignored employees asking him to leave and also ignored officers' calls to drop the knife.
Body cam footage also showed an officer requesting so-called "less-than-lethal force," like bean bag rounds and tasers.
Officers then began to evacuate customers, per investigators. Hillman headed for the back of the store, hitting an employee with a wine bottle.
As officers encountered the victim, they also spotted Hillman again. They attempted to taser him, but it didn't work.
Hillman then began throwing wine bottles at officers. Before one shot was fired, that missed. Then, after another attempt to de-escalate the situation, Hillman grabbed a store display and charged an officer with a bottle of wine.
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The officers then fired shots.
Hillman was shot in the leg and taken into custody.
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SIGN UP Michael Leininger, a former San Jose police officer and law enforcement consultant, said the officers' response was appropriate.
"An officer that was very calm, reacted appropriately, with the sole exception of the store should’ve been evacuated immediately," he said. "You could have had a hostage barricade situation. The blade on that knife was 8 inches long. It could’ve ended in a much, much worse manner than it did."
Leininger said he believes the officer may have tried to de-escalate the situation for too long because the store was not fully evacuated. He added that shooting was "justified."
"The suspect is fortunate he was only hit in the leg. But if the officer had used deadly force, it would have been a justifiable shooting," he said.
The Safeway employee was hospitalized following the incident.
Hillman now faces multiple felony charges, and the District Attorney is investigating and must decide whether the shooting was justified.
