Woman with crochet hook killed by police officers

Salinas police reported that an officer shot and killed a woman early Sunday who was believed to be lunging at another officer with a knife or ice pick.

Officers said the weapon wielded by Maria De La Torre turned out to be a crochet hook.

Police said the 45-year-old woman had been "acting strangely" when officers saw her in a parked minivan at 1143 E. Laurel Drive around 3:45 a.m.

As the two policemen got closer, they said they could see that De La Torre was stabbing herself in the neck with a "small implement."

The officers said they talked to her while they "tried to position themselves to open one of the doors to the van and subdue her," according to a report issued Sunday.

But according to the report, De La Torre would not talk and kept sliding between the driver and passenger seats, until she opened the passenger door and leapt out.

It was then that she lunged at one policeman with what the two "believed to be an ice pick or knife in her hand," the report said.

The policeman she had lunged toward fired a Taser stun gun at her while the other officer, believing she was about to stab his colleague, fired a pistol at her and struck her twice.

Police later determined that De La Torre's weapon was a metal crochet hook.

She was taken to Natividad Medical Center, police said, where she died.

Police were still outside De La Torre's small green house Sunday afternoon with yellow crime scene tape blocking the driveway.

Hernandez, who did not see the shooting, said De La Torre had been sick in recent days following another death in the family and that her husband, Jose Licea, called Hernandez's mother, Hilda Hernandez, around 1 a.m. Sunday saying De La Torre was unwell and needed to go to the hospital.

Hilda headed over to De La Torre's house and called 9-1-1, Hernandez said, only to request an ambulance, not any police officers.

McMillin said the call that came to police was of a woman acting erratically and people who call emergency services can't request only an ambulance because medics won't to go an emergency that may be unsafe until police have secured it.

When police arrived, Hernandez said, they told Hilda to "move out of the way" so they could get to De La Torre, Hernandez said. Her mother, she said, didn't see the shooting but later called Hernandez saying, "They killed her! They killed her!"

Licea, Hernandez said, did see the incident and the officer who shot his wife. The family, she said, is hiring a lawyer to look into the shooting.

"She was handicapped," Hernandez said. "They could have Tased her."