By Jaxon Van Derbeken and Justin Berton
The San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco police shot a knife-wielding man they say stabbed a police officer who responded to a morning call of a man slashing car tires.
The officers resorted to using their guns after their attempts to control the man with a bean-bag gun failed, authorities said.
Police said the man had been in a wheelchair, but was standing at the time he was shot.
The 10:15 a.m. shooting at 10th and Howard streets began when officers were summoned to the San Francisco Department of Public Health building at 1380 Howard St., where a man apparently had been slashing tires on parked cars, witnesses say.
During the confrontation, officers fired a bean bag round. However, the suspect stabbed one of the responding officers on the right side of the body. Officers opened fire.
Both the wounded officer and the suspect were taken to San Francisco General with nonlife-threatening injuries, police said.
Richard Sarraille, an employee at the Department of Public Health, said he saw the man in his wheelchair earlier in the morning in what he described as “a highly agitated state.” Sarraille said the bearded man, a Caucasian in his late 40s, was a regular visitor known to cause trouble at the building, which provides services for the mentally ill.
“Someone asked him to move from the entrance and he went crazy,” Sarraille said. “I told him he might want to settle down and he yelled, ‘F- you.’ ” Minutes later, Sarraille said he was not surprised to hear the man was involved in a police incident. At the scene Tuesday morning, a city vehicle parked outside the building had two flat tires on the curb side.
“He either had a death wish or he didn’t get the services he wanted,” said employee Doreen Paddock, who also saw the suspect before the shooting. “People come here to get help, but they’re also the people who need the help the most.”
A crime scene investigator collects evidence after San Francisco police officers shoot a man using a wheelchair who reportedly threatened them with a knife.
Copyright 2011 San Francisco Chronicle