Antioch police officer shoots man during mental health call

A man who was the subject of a mental health call was shot by an Antioch police officer and hospitalized Friday morning, authorities said.

Police said the man was in stable condition after being rushed to a hospital in an ambulance. They did not immediately identify the officer who fired the weapon.

Antioch police said the shooting happened because the man charged at officers with a knife and that another officer’s attempt to use a stun gun did little to stop him.

It all happened after two officers responded to a 12:50 a.m. call from a family in a second-floor apartment unit in the 200 block of West Third Street reporting that a 45-year-old family member was having a mental health crisis.

According to police, the man emerged from the kitchen as the officers entered the residence and was holding a knife and expressing a desire to die.

Police said that as the man approached the officers, they asked him to drop his knife and backed away from him and out of the unit onto the secondstory landing. The man brandished the knife as the officers went outside, then turned around and went back inside, closing the door, police said.

The police statement said the two officers then “created time and distance by moving away from the apartment in accordance with their training” but that as they did, the man “suddenly exited the apartment and charged at them with the knife still in his hand.”

Police said the officers yelled for the man to drop the knife and that he re- fused. After one officer used his stun gun to no effect, the other officers fired twice, according to the police statement.

The man dropped the knife after being shot and fell to the landing, police said. The officers provided called emergency responders and provided first aid until the ambulance got there, police said.

Antioch police are doing an investigation of the shooting, along with the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office and Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office, per the county’s Law Enforcement Involved Fatal Incident.