The drama began with a frantic 911 call about a stabbing at a church.
A newly released video shows police opening fire on a suspect and also hitting the woman he's using as a human shield in Los Angeles.
Now her son speaking out about Tuesday's incident.
"It hurts me so much knowing that I will never know how to see, hear, or talk to my mother again because the police didn’t know how to handle a situation properly," he said at a press conference.
The drama began with a frantic 911 call about a stabbing at a church.
“Hi, I have someone who stabbed somebody at my location," the caller told a dispatcher. "I need the police now."
Three LAPD officers responded to the scene and found 32-year-old Guillermo Perez with a bloody knife in his hand outside a homeless center next to the church.
The incident was caught on the police body cam. In the footage, the officers can be heard screaming at Perez to put down the knife at least 15 times. When he didn't comply, the cops used non-lethal bean bags in an effort to bring him down.
The bean bags either missed or struck a metal chair he was holding in front of him.
He then grabbed a woman using a walker and put the knife to her throat. That's when the officers suddenly opened fire.
In total, 18 shots were fired.
Two bullets struck the hostage, identified as 49-year-old Elizabeth Tollison, killing her. Perez was also shot dead.
Her family cannot believe she lost her life this way
"The police had no regard for my mother's life and shot her down. The situation could have been handled in so many different ways but they chose to take the worst case scenario," her distraught son said.
Inside Edition security expert Steve Kardian reviewed the video and explained what he believes went wrong.
"They had a very short window of opportunity to shoot him as he was walking towards her, that didn’t happen here," he said.
Details of the tragedy have emerged just days after another innocent bystander was killed by LAPD officers in a shootout at a Trader Joe's store.
LAPD Chief Michael Moore says it had been 13 years since a hostage was killed by an LAPD officer. Now, it has happened twice in 10 days.
“My heart goes out to this victim's family and I also feel for the officers who were involved in this as their lives will be forever changed,” he said at a press conference.
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