LA Homeless Shooting Victim was Cameroonian

A homeless man controversially shot dead by police in Los Angeles was from Cameroon, and had stolen the identity of a Frenchman, U.S. and French officials said Wednesday.

The LA Times had initially identified the victim -- killed Sunday in a shooting caught on a video which went viral -- as Charley Robinet, saying he was French, but the French foreign ministry denied this.

On Wednesday the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency said it had determined he was Cameroonian. They did not identify the victim.

In Paris a foreign ministry spokesman said "It is a case of identity theft, the victim of which was a Frenchman, Charley Robinet." 

The French spokesman said he did not know where Robinet is currently living. The LA Times said he was believed to be alive and well, and living in France.

LA Police Department (LAPD) chief Charlie Beck defended the four officers involved, saying they opened fire after the man -- identified by other homeless people on LA's Skid Row as "Africa" -- grabbed for one of their guns. 

Protestors staged a demonstration Tuesday outside LAPD headquarters over the killing, which comes in the wake of a series of shootings of African Americans by white police officers in the United States.

On Wednesday Beck went to visit a makeshift memorial which has sprung up at the scene of the weekend killing.