Holly MatkinPittsburg, CA – The Pittsburg Police Department (PPD) has released harrowing bodycam footage that captured the physical altercation between officers and a knife-wielding man who stabbed one officer in the neck (video below).
The incident occurred on Feb. 25, after a man called police to report that his son, 33-year-old Mark Mora, had tried to stab him through a closed screen door at his Warren Way home, the East Bay Times reported.
Officers responded to the area, and spotted Mora near the intersection of Mildred Avenue and West 17th Street, about three blocks away from his father’s residence.
The armed man wasn’t about to back down, so police tried to negotiate with him for the next hour, The Mercury News reported.
Bodycam footage showed Mora as he refused to comply with officers’ orders to drop his knife, and to get onto the ground.
“So, this is the Fourth Amendment!” Mora declared at one point, just before he started digging into his pockets.
“Mark! Stop digging in your pockets because I don’t know what you have in there,” one officer said.
“That’s why I’m showing you!” Mora responded. “This is why you guys came at me, right? Is to see what’s in my pockets, right? Right?”
The officers ordered him to show his hands, but Mora kept dumping the contents of his pockets onto the ground, and ultimately pulled out the knife.
“Mark, you will be tased!” one officer warned him.
The officers repeatedly told Mora to drop the knife, but he insisted that the blade wasn’t a danger.
“The seal’s on it!” he argued, dismissing their commands.
“Say the word, Sarge,” another officer said, just before Mora was shot with a less-lethal round.
But the projectile seemed to do little to subdue Mora, who squared off with the advancing officers.
A K9 raced into the melee, and a Taser was deployed just as officers closed in, bodycam footage showed.
“Watch that knife!” one officer yelled as they all tackled Mora to the ground.
As the officers tried to get Mora under control, he “deliberately reached back and jabbed the officer in the neck with the open blade,” police said, according to the East Bay Times.
“He f–king stabbed me!” an officer exclaimed in the video. “Ah f–k – my neck!”
The officers continued to struggle with the combative man, and ultimately manage to wrestle the blade out of his grasp.
The unnamed injured officer was transported to a local hospital, where he was treated for non-life threatening injuries, The Mercury News reported.
“This could have ended much worse,” Pittsburg Police Chief Brian Addington told the paper.
He commended all of the officers for their “extreme constraint” throughout the encounter with Mora, and said that their actions were “very heroic.”
Mora has been charged with resisting arrest, being under the influence, and two counts of attempted assault with a deadly weapon – one for the attack on his father, and the other for stabbing the officer, East County Today reported.
It was the latest of more than a dozen arrests the suspect has racked up since 2015, according to The Mercury News.
Mora has previously been charged with robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, theft, drug possession, vehicle theft, and a litany of probation violations.
“We hope the footage related to this incident gives the community a better understanding of what happened,” the PPD said in a news release, according to The Mercury News. “We are thankful that the officer and the man were not seriously hurt.”
You can watch bodycam footage of the officers’ encounter with Mora in the video below. WARNING – Graphic Content: