Witness describes moment before Porterville police shoots suspect armed with knife

PORTERVILLE, Calif. (KFSN) -- Authorities are investigating an officer-involved shooting that happened inside a 99 Cents Only store in Porterville Saturday night.

A witness says the woman who was shot did not seem like she was going to hurt anyone. He admits though she was acting very strange with a knife in her hand, even after police arrived.

Cell phone video captures an officer yelling for the suspect to drop the knife.

"It just happened too fast," witness Jaime Butler said. "It was very sad to see."

Butler is the man behind the camera, and he says those two shots went right through her body.

"The bullet went past my wife, and it scared the living hell out of all of us," he said. "It's scary, you know, just a sudden vibration. It was just scary."

Butler says before the woman was shot, she was going around damaging the store.

"She was going throughout the store stabbing sodas and throwing stuff off the shelves just being a little crazy," he said.

Porterville Police says the woman was told several times to put down her weapon. It's when she took off with the knife in her hand, that the officer fired his gun, fearing for the life of a customer nearby.

Butler though wishes the police would have acted differently.

"They could've used a taser because she wasn't going after nobody, especially the officer," he argued. "She was running away from the officer when they fired."

The woman was taken to the intensive care unit of Community Regional Medical Center, and the officer involved in the shooting has been placed on administrative leave.