It started with a televised car chase and ended with the televised execution of an unarmed mentally ill man by three Los Angeles police officers.

Some 20 cops converged on Brian Newt Beaird's Corvette as he led them on a high-speed chase down the streets of downtown LA last Friday.

The chase began back in Cudahy, after Beaird fled from Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who had attempted to pull him over for drunk or reckless driving.

It's unclear if Beaird was intoxicated: A lifelong friend told NBC Los Angeles the 51-year-old suffered from schizophrenia and needed help.

The voices in his head, coupled with helicopter lights and pursuing cops likely "scared the hell out of him," Gilbert Vasquez said.

The chase ended after Beaird slammed his car into an occupied Nissan at the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Los Angeles Street. The Nissan's passengers were injured but will recover.

With KTLA's cameras still on him, Beaird got out of the mangled vehicle and staggered towards the sidewalk with his back to the police officers. He could be seen raising his hands for a moment before being shot multiple times and collapsing to the ground. (Around 21:10 in the video above.)

The three officers who fired the 15 to 20 rounds that killed Beaird have been removed from the field pending the results of the department's investigation.

Police Chief Charlie Beck said in a radio interview yesterday that preliminary information suggests one officer fired a beanbag round at Beaird before the other officers opened fire.

KTLA's footage appears to confirm this.

"Before an officer discharges a beanbag, the protocol is to loudly state, ‘bean bag ready! Bean bag ready!’ so that everybody knows that the next detonation that they hear is not a gunshot," Beck said at a press conference on Monday, but would neither confirm the deployment of a beanbag nor the protocol's failure.

He did, however, concede that in "the situation as presented in this pursuit, a beanbag would be an option."

"If there's training required, they'll be trained," Beck told reporters. "If there's discipline required, they'll be disciplined. If not, we'll move on."