An officer shot and killed a woman during a welfare check when she charged at him with a knife, slashing him on the forehead a couple times, body cam footage shows
On September 16, at 10 a.m., an officer paid a welfare check to Sydney Wilson, 33, a commercial real estate manager in the Washington, DC, region. Officer Peter Liu, a crisis intervention officer of 14 years, casually knocked on the door and Wilson opened it. She pushed it back shut after the officer introduced himself.
The policeman kept knocking for the next three minutes, then the 6' 6" Wilson opened the door and rushed at him with a knife . "Oh Jesus Christ," Liu said before retreating down the corridor, Wilson trailing behind, the knife still in hand. The video then reveals that the officer repeatedly told Wilson to "back up" while pointing his firearm at her. Wilson is charged with repeatedly stabbing the officer in the face before the officer discharged his weapon .
Wilson fired two shots as he lunged toward him once more. Wilson seemed to be still approaching him when he fired three more shots before she collapsed to the ground. Blood can be seen streaming from Liu's head onto his palm and the ground in the video as he called in the shooting and asked for backup.
Wilson received CPR on the spot, but a nearby hospital declared her dead from the gunshot wounds. According to Police Chief Kevin Davis, Liu tried his hardest to keep things from getting worse.
"It could have been much, much, much worse; the slash, gash and slash wound he received was at the top of his forehead," he said. The police were called to do a welfare check on Wilson by a mental health specialist. These kinds of assessments are typically conducted in conjunction with another mental health specialist, Davis acknowledged.
However, because they were on another call at the time, the typical co-responder was not available. Davis thinks that by failing to arrive on the site, the physician stopped the incident from getting bloodier.
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"Clinicians absolutely expose themselves to an element of danger any time they get out of a police car and go up to a door or a scene of a crash or an outdoor scenario with a police officer, and there's an element of risk associated with it." He went on to say that he's not sure if a mental health specialist could have prevented the incident from developing the way it did.
Wilson, a former basketball player at Georgetown University, was honored on Instagram by her alma mater. "Georgetown women's basketball mourns the tragic loss of Sydney Wilson (C'13). Forever a Hoya." Officer Liu is still on administrative leave while the shooting is being investigated internally.
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