Footage Shows MANIAC Throwing Knives at Cops Before Shooting!

Police officers walking past caution tape at a crime scene

A man slumped in a van with a fake rifle became one more deadly test of what “reasonable fear” really means when Los Angeles police decide to pull the trigger.

Story Snapshot

Officers say Jeremy Flores raised a realistic BB rifle after a 911 call about a possible assault weapon.
Family members insist the “gun” stayed on his lap and that he was too wounded and strapped in to move.
Released video shows commands and chaos, but not the exact moment when bullets start flying.
The case lands in the middle of a sharp rise in LAPD shootings, many involving replica guns and knives.

How a replica rifle turned a Boyle Heights stop into a fatal shooting

Jeremy Flores ended up dead in Boyle Heights after officers rolled on a 911 report of a man with a “possible assault rifle” near Spence and 8th Street. Responding Hollenbeck Division officers found Flores sitting in a van, holding what looked like an MP5-style rifle. Body camera footage and LAPD narration show officers yelling clear commands: get out of the car, drop the gun, and warnings like “You will get shot, dude” as they tried to get him to surrender.

LAPD says Flores refused those commands and raised the weapon, which they later identified as a battery-powered MP5-style BB airsoft rifle that fires metallic projectiles and closely resembles a real automatic weapon. At that point, three named officers — Livier Jimenez, Fernando Godinez, and Michael Ruiz — opened fire, creating what the department officially labeled an Officer-Involved Shooting. A SWAT team later sent in a drone, which filmed Flores slumped over the wheel, the replica rifle on his lap, and his hands still close to the gun.

What the cameras show — and what they leave out

The official video package feels polished and tight, built from body cameras, drone footage, and a narrated “critical incident briefing.” It shows the van, the rifle-shaped object, and officers shouting commands behind cover. It does not show a clear, head-on angle of the exact moment when shots are fired. LAPD itself admits the body-worn cameras “did not provide a clear picture of the suspect’s actions at the time of the shooting,” which leaves a hole right where the public most wants to see.

That gap fuels the loudest critics. Family members and activists say the August 28 release is “highly-edited” and accuse LAPD of using cuts to steer public opinion instead of simply showing what happened. They point out that California’s transparency laws forced the department to release something within 45 days, but did not force them to share every angle or the full raw files. On their view, the missing footage matters more than the dramatic clips LAPD chose to include.

Two competing stories about those final seconds

LAPD’s version is simple and direct: a man with what appeared to be an assault rifle ignored repeated commands, raised the weapon toward officers, and was shot in response. That explanation tracks closely with how officer-involved shootings are usually justified under law — focus on the threat, the commands, and the moment the officer says they feared for life or serious injury. In a country awash in guns, that narrative lines up with a lot of common sense conservative thinking about self-defense and quick decisions.

The family’s story lands very differently. Flores’ girlfriend, Paola Mendez, says he was wearing a seatbelt, gravely wounded as soon as he was hit, and simply could not move to “refuse to exit” the vehicle. She also insists the BB rifle stayed on his lap, not gripped in his hands, and that “there is no evidence whatsoever that he pointed it at anyone.” From that angle, claims of non-compliance after the shooting sound more like a script than a fact pattern, and the missing head-on camera angle looks less like a technical glitch and more like protection for the shooters.

Why replica guns and edged weapons keep leading to gunfire

This case sits inside a larger pattern in Los Angeles and across California. LAPD’s own numbers show shootings have climbed sharply, with more cases involving replica or imitation guns that look real under stress. A statewide analysis of use-of-force incidents finds that in about 80 percent of deadly or serious gunfire encounters, officers believe the person is armed with a dangerous weapon, often a firearm or a replica. When a realistic toy gun appears in a tense call, officers tend to treat it like the real thing until proven otherwise.

Media and academic work on these shootings makes one hard truth clear: high gun ownership and more violent calls push officers toward earlier and more frequent use of deadly force. For many conservatives, that reality reinforces support for officers who face split-second choices under threat. At the same time, when video is edited and key frames are missing, trust breaks down even among people inclined to back the police. Boyle Heights rallies, family demands for full footage, and an ongoing California Department of Justice review show how much patience wears thin when institutions ask for trust without showing every frame.