The man fatally shot by San Francisco police after intentionally crashing his car into the Chinese consulate building earlier this month was swinging a knife as officers confronted him, police body-camera footage released by the department on Thursday shows. A crossbow and arrows were also found in the backseat of the car that Zhanyuan Yang, 31, rammed into the consulate’s visa office on Oct. 9, according to photos taken at the scene. The body-camera footage shows a sergeant approaching Yang, who is rubbing his face from what police said was pepper spray deployed by a security guard, asking, “Does he have a gun?” Yang then whirls around on the sergeant and the guard, making what SFPD Chief Bill Scott characterized as “multiple, rapid, downward swinging motions with the knife.” The sergeant discharges his gun on Yang, who collapses to the floor. “You guys should have told me he had a knife,” the officer can be heard saying. Yang was hospitalized and later pronounced dead. Police had yet to announce a possible motive in the case as of Thursday.
