Charleena Lyles, 30yo woman who was fatally shot by SPD today. Photo shared with permission from family pic.twitter.com/zHr3DV8mqM
— Steven Hsieh (@stevenjhsieh) June 18, 2017
On Sunday morning, Seattle police officers shot and killed Charleena Lyles, a 30-year-old mother of four, at her apartment in the Magnuson Park neighborhood of the city, The Seattle Times reports. Lyles had called 911 to report an attempted burglary. According to a statement from Seattle police, there were "several children" in the apartment at the time of the shooting when Lyles "confronted" officers with a knife.
At a vigil on Sunday night, family members identified the woman as Charleena Lyles and said that she had a history of mental health issues. Lyles was several months pregnant with her fifth child, the family said. “Why couldn’t they have Tased her?” Monika Williams, Lyles’s sister, told the Seattle Times. “They could have taken her down. I could have taken her down.”
Two police officers responded to Lyles's call around 10 a.m. Detective Mark Jamieson that officers Lyles's call flagged “hazard information” in their system because of a previous incident with Lyles, prompting a two-officer response. “Officers were confronted by a 30-year-old woman armed with a knife,” the department wrote in a statement. “Both officers fired their duty weapons, striking the woman." The children in the apartment were unharmed and police are trying to determine if they witnessed the shooting.
The department’s Force Investigative Team is investigating the officers's use of deadly force in the shooting. Authorities said that both officers had been placed on administrative leave.