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San Luis Obispo identifies man killed by officer, releases video

March 7, 2026

By KAREN VELIE

San Luis Obispo city officials identified the man shot and killed by an officer on Feb. 28 as 69-year-old Willie Felton Foster Jr.

Shortly after 4:40 p.m., several 9-1-1 callers reported a male in the 900 block of El Capitan Way who was shouting aggressively and waving a firearm. Officers located the man near the intersection of Poinsettia Street and Bluebell Way.

Officers arrived to find a male who matched the description in the 911 calls.

As the first officer on the scene stepped out of his car, the suspect dropped to one knee and pointed what appeared to be a gun at the officer. The officer yelled at the suspect, “hey, stop, stop, stop.” The officer then fired a single shot from his rifle which struck the suspect, who fell to the ground.

He died at the scene.

Following the shooting, investigators determined the suspect’s firearm was a replica.

Suspect’s replica gun

Department administrators placed the officer on administrative leave. The California Department of Justice is investigating the shooting.

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Thank you for cleaning up my neighborhood . Those ” people” need to stay down town .


-1

The easy answer is ‘suicide by cop’. The difficult answer is ‘why not the insane asylum’?


21

The amount of funding for LE versus mental health services isn’t even close.


-2

Reagan had no choice, but to end federal money going to STATE mental programs, due to federal legislation signed by Carter. Obviously, states did not pick up the remainder needed to keep mental health facilities open, which created the bloom in homeless nutcases loose on society.


3

Thank you! The Democrats have had control of the Legislature all these years and have done little if anything to alleviate the problem of the mentally ill/homeless (other than blow multi-millions of dollars on homeless services with no accountability) while they continue to blame Reagan for the problem. Is anyone in the Democrat party willing to lead, do the hard work, actually tackle these problems instead of making excuses and majoring on the minors? It sure doesn’t seem like it.


2