Police officers Angel Villaronga (pictured) talked the man out of hurting himself and others
A Baltimore police officer may have saved a life by de-escalating a situation in which a knife-wielding man appeared to be trying to provoke police into shooting him.
Body camera footage first obtained by WBFF-TV shows Officer Angel Villaronga starting a conversation with the man as he pleaded with officers to shoot him, saying that he is holding a knife and is a ‘threat.’
‘Why you don’t want to drop the knife, man,’ Villaronga can be heard asking the distraught individual.
‘I want to die tonight,’ the man says in response.
‘I’m not dealing with life no more, sir,’ the man with the knife adds as he paces back and forth along a residential sidewalk.
The man, who was taken to a nearby psychiatric hospital for treatment, initially encourages officers to use deadly force, saying: ‘C’mon, man. Just shoot me. Just do your job, man.’
‘A man has got a knife in his hands,’ he continues, ‘he’s threatening you saying he’s gonna hurt someone out here and all of a sudden you all don’t do nothing?’
Villaronga got the man to open up about a domestic situation and eventually convinced him to peacefully surrender.
‘Look, I’m 38-years-old,’ Villaronga can be heard saying.
‘I can relate to you, bro. There’s not a thing in this world that I have not dealt with that you probably have dealth with. At the end of the day, I got kids to go home to’
Seconds later, the footage shows the man hand over his knife to Villaronga, who thanks him for his cooperation.
Villaronga got the man to open up about his domestic situation and relinquish the knife in his hand
Villaronga says he relied on his training as well as personal experience with his father when he was 13-years-old
‘I was hoping that was the outcome it was gonna be. I didn’t want it to be a deadly force outcome,’ Villaronga said.
Explaining what was running through his mind during the incident, Villaronga explains he was focused on just trying to establish a connection between two individuals.
‘I have a badge, I have a gun… but at the same time I’m just as human as you are and that’s what tried to get him to understand,’ said Villaronga.
The tense situation took place on Mosher St, West Baltimore in September.
Villaronga says he relied on his training as well as personal experience.
As a teenager, he says he watched his father threaten to jump from a building, but convinced him to change his mind with the help of officers.
‘At 13-years-old I had the same situation happen with my father,’ he tells WBFF-TV, emotionally recounting the experience.
‘He was going to jump off the roof. We got NYPD there… they asked me to go up (to talk to him). They didn’t want him to see my mom… that was going to make him jump. So, de-escalation right there.’
Villaronga’s father was able to get help and is still alive, WBFF-TV noted.