Video Of Police Officers Shooting A Homeless Man Goes Viral.Watch.

The video, which appears to have shaken Los Angeles and is going viral by the minute, shows a homeless man being shot dead by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) after a violent struggle between them.

Three officers opened fire after the man tried to grab a gun from an officer, the police says





.

The video captures a voice shouting "Drop the gun!" some four times before five shots are heard.

The dramatic confrontation unfolded in the city's Skid Row area (it is an impoverished area, typically urban, inhabited by the poor, the homeless). The video was uploaded on Facebook merely hours after the LAPD shooting.

Horrified bystanders watched as five officers wrestled the homeless man (identified as Africa, who had been homeless after treatment for mental illness) on a pavement, before shooting him five times. 

Meanwhile, Sergeant Barry Montgomery, an LAPD spokesman, told an LA Television station,

The incident would be fully investigated. It’s going to be a long investigation and we will, you know, get to the bottom of it.”

The LA police department told BBC that officers had been responding to reports of a robbery, and had attempted to use a Taser to subdue the suspect, but he had "continued fighting and resisting".

No other gun was recovered at the scene, LA police commander Andrew Smith added. 

This comes soon after US saw weeks of protests, after the highly publicized killings of black men on their soil.

BBC 

Commander Smith told reporters that three officers, including a sergeant, had fired their guns, as they struggled on the ground for control of one of the police officers' weapon.

He said the department was aware of the amateur video and would attempt to amplify its sound and pictures to establish exactly what had happened, adding that at least one of the police officers had been wearing a body camera.

The video is disturbing. It's disturbing any time anyone loses their life. It's a tragedy: Commander Smith

As hastag LAPDShooting trends on U.S. Twitter, the outrage of the public is very evident. Most of the tweets are on the lines of "When citizens scare us, we're allowed to kill them."

The latest incident has the potential to embroil the nation into another domestic outrage.