Car rams into Chinese consulate in San Francisco; police shoot driver dead

Chinese consulate said incident was ‘serious threat’, but details about what happened remain sketchy.

Police in San Francisco have shot dead the driver of a vehicle that rammed into the Chinese consulate in the city, ending up in the lobby of the visa section.

Unverified footage circulating on social media on Monday in the United States showed a vehicle inside the consulate with officers pointing their weapons at the driver’s door.

A spokesman for the consulate said the suspect had driven “violently into our consulate’s administration hall, posing a serious threat to the lives of staff and people on-site and causing serious damage”.

Official details of the incident remained sketchy.

“When officers arrived here on scene, they found the vehicle had come to rest inside the lobby of the Chinese consulate. Officers entered, made contact with the suspect and an officer-involved shooting occurred,” San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Sergeant Kathryn Winters said.

Officers, paramedics and medics had tried to save the driver’s life, but the person was pronounced dead at the hospital some time later, Winters said.

Police were coordinating with investigators from the US State Department, she said, adding: “There’s very little information that we can give at this time.”

The consulate said it “strongly condemns this violent attack and reserves the right to pursue responsibility for the incident”.

It later announced the visa office would be closed temporarily.

San Francisco, in northern California, is home to a large number of ethnic Chinese people.