Horrific moment cop shoots Amelia Baca ,75, with dementia dead in her home (Video)
Amelia Baca, 75, of Las Cruces, was shot dead by an officer after she refused to put down two carving knives while inside her home on April 16.
A police officer fatally shot a 75-year-old woman with dementia in the doorway of her New Mexico home for refusing to drop two giant carving knives after threatening to kill her daughter.
The horrifying moment was captured on the cop’s body cam after Amelia Baca’s daughter called 911 and reported the woman was ‘trying to kill me’.
Amelia Baca, of Las Cruces, was shot dead on April 16 by a nine-year veteran officer after her daughter called 911 and reported the woman was ‘trying to kill me.’
‘I really need an officer, an ambulance, or someone because my mother’s getting aggressive right now,’ her daughter, who was not identified, told a 911-operator.
‘She’s 75 and she has dementia. I’m hiding in a room because she is threatening to kill me…I have my little one here.’
The ‘freaked out’ daughter told police she didn’t know where her mother obtained the weapon and wasn’t sure if she ‘took her medication this morning’.
‘[She’s] hitting the floor [with the knife], saying she’s going to kill me,’ she told police. She later reported the Baca had begun to ‘throw hot water’ and was ‘scaring’ her little girl, who can be heard crying in the backroom.
The older woman begins to wave the officer backward with her free hand as he continues to tell her to ‘drop the f**king knives’.
She takes two steps forward and the officer fires two shots. She is later seen folded over on the ground.
The two women scream simultaneously and the daughter begins to cry. The younger woman can be heard telling the woman in Spanish: ‘Mama, it is not a real gun.’ They initially thought the gun was a taser but later discovered that it wasn’t.
Baca was pronounced dead on the scene.
In a post-incident interview, obtained by the Las Cruces Sun News, her granddaughter Inoh revealed the old woman didn’t know English and she had asked the officer not to shoot Baca.
‘I told them plenty of times, ‘don’t shoot her, she’s mentally ill,’ she told detectives, according to the Las Cruces Sun News. ‘There was no danger.
‘I don’t even know how many times I yelled at him, ‘don’t shoot her she’s mentally ill.’ The pair were pushed back by a second officer, who did not appear in the bodycam footage, the Las Cruces Sun News reported.