California police shoot, kill man doing ritualistic dance with knife and snake near fitness club

Police in Torrance, California, shot and killed a man wielding a knife in a parking lot of a Planet Fitness club, KCAL-TV reported.

What did witnesses say?

Witnesses told media “the man was holding a snake and doing some sort of ritualistic dance with it,” the report stated.

When police arrived they found a man in his 30s waving around a four-inch folding knife in the parking lot, Torrance police Sgt. Ronald Harris told the TV station.

Police found an aquarium at the scene, but the snake was nowhere to be found.

The suspect refused to comply with officers’ commands and charged toward them with the knife. That’s when the shooting occurred just before 9 a.m. on Friday, Harris said.

A witness said it appeared the man had no intentions of stopping.

What did the suspect do?

“He decided he had enough of all this and he gets up and starts amping himself up, and then turns around and goes walking straight at the officers with no intent to stop as far as I’m concerned,” witness Brandon Hallock told KCAL.

“They opened fire on him and he just went down,” Hallock added.

Aerial images showed what appeared to a firearm at the scene. There was no information on what kind of weapon it was, the report stated.

The suspect died at the scene, Harris told KCAL. No additional information about him was immediately available.

No officers were injured.

Torrance is located in the southwestern section of Los Angeles County.