Charly “Africa” Keunang

Charly Leundeu Keunang, 43, a Cameroonian national living homeless on Skid Row and known locally as “Africa,” was shot five times and killed by three Los Angeles Police officers on March 1, 2015, during a struggle that began when officers tried to arrest him on suspicion of robbery. A bystander's cellphone video of the daylight shooting was viewed millions of times worldwide and sparked days of protest under the banner “Justice For Africa.” Police said Keunang grabbed a rookie officer's holstered gun during the struggle, but the family's attorney later showed his DNA was never found on the weapon, despite the police chief's initial public claim that it had been. The LAPD Police Commission ruled the shooting justified in 2016, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney declined to bring charges later that year. A federal jury nonetheless found two officers liable in 2018, and the city settled with Keunang's family for $1.95 million. No one has ever been criminally charged in Keunang's death.

Los Angeles, CA · Los Angeles County

• 2015: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The confrontation, the struggle over the officer's holstered gun, and the shooting, per police body camera footage obtained by the Los Angeles Times and the district attorney's 22-page investigative report.
• Keunang was shot five times by three officers — Sergeant Chand Syed and Officers Francisco Martinez and Daniel Torres — after a struggle that began when officers attempted to remove him from his tent on suspicion of robbing another homeless person.
• Police Chief Charlie Beck stated shortly after the shooting that Keunang's DNA had been found on the gun; attorney Dan Stormer, representing Keunang's family in a civil suit, later presented evidence that Keunang's DNA was not in fact found on the weapon.
• The LAPD Police Commission unanimously ruled in February 2016 that the officers were within policy on the use of deadly force, following an 11-month investigation, while separately finding a rookie officer had used improper tactics.
• The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced in December 2016 that the officers “acted lawfully in self-defense and in defense of others” and declined to bring criminal charges.
• A federal jury in May 2018 found two of the officers liable in Keunang's death; the city subsequently settled the family's civil lawsuit for $1.95 million.
• A bystander, Trishawn Cardessa Carey, who briefly picked up a baton an officer dropped during the struggle, was separately charged with assault with a deadly weapon, facing 25 years to life under California's three-strikes law for that act alone.

• Whether Keunang in fact grabbed or nearly gained control of an officer's holstered gun, as police maintained and as justified the department's and DA's conclusions, or whether that account was undermined by the absence of his DNA on the weapon, as the family's civil attorney argued, was never resolved by any criminal trial since none was brought.
• Why the police chief's early public statement about DNA evidence on the gun differed from what was later presented in civil litigation has not been addressed in any official public accounting.
• The specific reasoning connecting the Police Commission's and district attorney's justified-shooting findings with the federal civil jury's contrary liability finding, examining much of the same video evidence, has not been reconciled in a single public record.

• LAist — “District Attorney Says 2015 LAPD Shooting Of Homeless Man Was Justified”
• CBS Los Angeles — “LA Approves Nearly $2M Lawsuit Settlement In Fatal LAPD Shooting Of Charly 'Africa' Keunang On Skid Row”
• CBC News — “Los Angeles police officers cleared in fatal skid row shooting”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs