San Diego police on Thursday released video footage of an officer fatally shooting a knife-wielding man during a confrontation in Bird Rock over the weekend.

They also identified the man as 25-year-old Dejon Marques Heard, whose grandmother told the La Jolla Light that he has long grappled with mental health issues.

“There were times he would have anxiety attacks … and he would get in his own head and would have his moments,” Susan Klat said of Heard. “It’s heartbreaking.”

About 7 a.m. Saturday, people reported seeing a man holding a knife and shouting as he stood by a car parked in a traffic lane on La Jolla Boulevard near Midway Street. The 911 calls included one from a man who screamed, “Right here! Right now!” before the line disconnected.

The footage police released comes from cameras worn by the two San Diego police officers who arrived at the scene together in a patrol vehicle.

The video shows the officers pull up and park in the northbound lane to find Heard standing next to the driver’s door of his parked car in the southbound lane, near a roundabout. He was speaking incoherently.

Heard looks at the officers, and says, “All right, let’s do this.” With his shoe flying off and the knife raised over his shoulder, he charges then stutter-steps toward the patrol car and toward police Officer Tarik Andrew, who was on the passenger’s side. Both officers, guns drawn, back away.

Heard, still holding the knife, slows then stops as he repeatedly screams, “You’ve got to be kidding with me right now.” By this point, he is at the front of the police car, on the passenger’s side, the same side of the car as Andrew.

Heard starts to walk toward Andrew. The officer, backing away, opens fire.

Heard screams and drops, the knife now on the ground beside him. As the two officers approach and yell commands at him, Heard flicks the knife under the police car, where he can no longer reach it. “There you go,” one of the officers says.

The video footage police released ends seconds later. Authorities said the two officers started life-saving efforts until paramedics arrived and took Heard to a hospital, where he died.

Witness James Rudolph said Heard had been “standing in the street, screaming and gesticulating.” He said Heard ignored the officers’ commands to drop the knife and continued moving “in a menacing manner.”

An area resident posted on social media that she saw a man sitting in a car blocking the road about 6:30 a.m., less than a half-hour before the 911 calls shared by police. She said the man got out and began “pulling things out of his trunk and changing his pants, ranting and raving.”

According to Heard’s grandmother, Heard had been in foster care since his teens, and she was his primary source of financial support. In recent years, Klat said, her grandson tried to attend college in Arizona and live independently but had little success.

Klat said that Heard returned to San Diego but was unable to stay with recovery and treatment programs and was repeatedly admitted to area hospitals on 72-hour emergency mental health holds. After each incident, she said, he was discharged into her care.

Klat said Heard was living in his car at the time of his death.

“His friends would often offer him a couch to sleep on, but he would rather sleep in his car because he never wanted to inconvenience anyone,” Klat said. “He was a generous, loving, soft kid.”

In 2019, Heard was arrested on allegations of stabbing another man and spent seven months in jail. Klat said the incident “put him over the edge” and exacerbated his mental health struggles.

“The arrest and time in jail scared him, but he wasn’t cognitively there to understand what was happening,” Klat said. “He filed a complaint and said the police were harassing him, but he felt like no one was listening to him. They would shame him. He struggled so deeply from that event.”

Andrew, the officer who shot Heard, has been with the San Diego Police Department for three years. He is assigned to Northern Division.

State law requires police agencies to release body-worn camera footage within 45 days of any encounter when an officer fires a gun or uses force that leads to great bodily injury or death.

The Sheriff’s Department is investigating the incident under a countywide protocol to ensure no law enforcement agency investigates its own police shootings.

Figueroa is a Union-Tribune staff writer. Mackin-Solomon writes for U-T Community Press.