She stopped at the southwest corner of La Brea and 4th and turned to face the officers, screaming obscenities, the statement said.
The two officers got off their bikes. When Larrigan attempted to calm Mitchell, she pushed the shopping cart toward him, Parks' statement said. The officer blocked it with his foot. It is at this point, officials agree, that Larrigan missed an opportunity to disarm Mitchell.
Seconds later, Parks said, Mitchell pulled the 12-inch screwdriver from a pile of clothes in the cart. She held it in a menacing manner, threatening to kill the officers if they got any closer.
"Instinctively and simultaneously," Parks said, both officers drew their pistols. Larrigan ordered Mitchell to drop the screwdriver. She refused, and began waving the weapon from side to side.
At this point, according to Parks' statement, Larrigan and Clark prepared to subdue Mitchell with nonlethal pepper spray. At that very moment, a civilian bystander intervened and attempted to talk Mitchell into dropping the screwdriver, the chief said. Larrigan, fearing that the man was in danger, led him away. This distraction, the chief said, prevented Larrigan from using his pepper spray.
Meanwhile, Mitchell resumed her rapid walk, taking her shopping cart with her, Parks said. The officers, guns still drawn, followed on foot. Larrigan and Clark again ordered her to drop the screwdriver, and she again refused, Parks said.
As Larrigan radioed for backup, Mitchell again raised her screwdriver, and this time lunged at the officer, Parks said. "Fearing for his life and believing Mitchell was about to stab him in the neck," Larrigan got into a semi-crouch position and fired one shot. Mitchell, struck in the chest, died less than an hour later at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Parks said the trajectory of the bullet--slightly upward and front to back--and the fact that Mitchell was close enough to Larrigan to have gunshot residue on the hand with which she was holding the screwdriver when she allegedly lunged at him, corroborate the officers' version of events. "The evidence clearly supports . . . the officers' account of the incident," Parks said.
The shooting touched off a firestorm of controversy, with police critics demanding to know why officers had not used nonlethal means to subdue the tiny woman who friends and relatives described as having been bright, happy and articulate earlier in life. She graduated from college and worked as a bank teller before she began a slow descent into mental illness about five years ago. In recent years, her home was a bus kiosk outside a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant near where she was shot.
