No Charges For Officers In Deadly Hatchet Man Shooting

SAN JOSE, CA -- Two veteran San Jose police officers lawfully shot and killed a hatchet-wielding man during his one-man invasion of a San Jose power plant early this year, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office has determined.

Thompson Nguyen, a San Jose man who suffered from mental illness, drove to the Metcalf Energy Center on Jan. 9 at about 5 p.m. armed with two hatchets, three pipes, seven knives nunchucks, a GoPro camera and a sword. During the confrontation, the 27-year-old man repeatedly asked officers to shoot him. The officers "only fired after their de-escalation efforts failed" and Nguyen advanced on them with a hatchet and a metal pole.

"Any reasonable officer would conclude that Nguyen, whether as a result of a mental health issue or not, had decided that he was going to die that day and that if he had to attack an officer with a weapon to make it happen, he was going to do so," Prosecutor David Boyd said. Boyd wrote the report seen here https://gallery.mailchimp.com/.

The District Attorney's Office investigates all fatal law enforcement encounters to decide if the lethal force was legal. By law, officers can use potentially deadly force when they or others are faced with imminent danger.

These types of probes have become more challenging as officers become more and more faced with encounters with mentally ill people on the streets since most psychiatric hospitals were closed in the 1980s. According to a Public Policy Institute 2015 report, 15 percent of those incarcerated are mentally ill.

In this case, Santa Clara County officials evaluated the evidence including three videos to come to the conclusion that officers were forced to shoot Nguyen when he advanced toward them. In one circumstance when Nguyen asked to be shot, an officer replied: "We don't want to shoot."

Two officers fired eight shots, and he was pronounced dead at 5:37 p.m.

Later officers found a fake police badge and journals in the Nguyen's car at the Blanchard Road electric utility plant. The man wrote Metcalf employees had put microchips in his brain.

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