Homeless man shot dead by LAPD was not deported due to stolen identity

Lauren Gambino in New York
Wednesday 4 March 2015 22.14 GMT

The true identity of the man who was shot and killed by Los Angeles police officers on Skid Row in downtown LA remains a mystery, even after federal immigration officials said on Wednesday that he was a Cameroonian national whom they were unable to deport because he lacked the proper documentation.

News outlets cited anonymous law enforcement officials on Tuesday in identifying the 39-year-old man as Charley Saturmin Robinet, who was described as a French national who had served 15 years in a US federal prison for bank robbery. But French consular officials denied the report, saying the “real Charley Robinet” was living a “totally normal life” in France and was “totally unaware his identity had been stolen years and years ago”.

The man who was killed by LAPD on Sunday assumed Robinet’s identity years ago, when he helped rob a Wells Fargo bank in Thousand Oaks, 40 miles outside of downtown LA, in 2000. He reportedly used Robinet’s identity to acquire a French passport to come to the US in the late 1990s.

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Based on his claim of French citizenship, immigration officials at the time reached out to the French consular for the appropriate travel documents to deport him. French officials initially issued the document, then rescinded it based on a determination that he was not French, but rather from Cameroon.

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