Officials: Man killed by LAPD on Skid Row robbed bank, stole identity
LOS ANGELES -- A homeless ex-convict who was killed by Los Angeles police was wanted for violating probation in a bank robbery case, a U.S. marshal said Tuesday.
The federal warrant was issued Jan. 9 for Charley Saturmin Robinet after he didn't provide monthly reports to a probation officer in November, December and January, Deputy U.S. Marshal Matthew Cordova said.
A law enforcement official identified Robinet, 39, as the man police killed Sunday on Skid Row. The official wasn't authorized to speak publicly and talked to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The shooting was videotaped by a bystander and nearby surveillance cameras. Two of the officers involved in the altercation were wearing body cameras.
The case has sparked protests in Los Angeles, including a rally that drew hundreds of people Tuesday morning before the police commission meeting, CBS Los Angeles reported.
Robinet was released from prison in May 2014 after being convicted in 2000 of holding up a Wells Fargo branch and pistol-whipping an employee to pay for acting classes.
During the confrontation Sunday, Robinet tried to grab a rookie officer's gun before three officers shot him, authorities said.
Robinet was identified as a French national when he was convicted of three federal charges in the robbery. He served roughly 13 years in prison and then spent six months in a halfway house before being released, said Ed Ross, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons.
Axel Cruau, the consul general for France in Los Angeles, said Robinet stole the identity of a French citizen and was living in the United States under an assumed name. Robinet had applied for a French passport in the late 1990s to come to the United States to "pursue a career in acting."
Robinet was arrested in the bank robbery along with an accomplice and a getaway driver after they tried to rob the bank in Thousand Oaks, about 40 miles west of downtown Los Angeles.
That arrest spurred the consulate to provide Robinet with support, but officials later realized he is not French, Cruau said.
"The real Charley Robinet is in France apparently living a totally normal life and totally unaware his identity had been stolen years and years ago," Cruau said.
While in the federal prison in Rochester, Minnesota, the man known as Robinet was assigned to the mental health unit and federal officials said medical staff determined he was suffering from "a mental disease or defect" that required treatment in a psychiatric hospital, documents show.