NYPD: Cop wounded after officers shoot, kill man brandishing knife
A man shot and killed by NYPD officers in Staten Island on Sunday threatened police with this knife. Credit: NYPD
Police officers shot and killed a man brandishing a 14-inch knife on Staten Island Sunday night, in a shooting that left an officer wounded by the gunfire, the NYPD said.
The officer was in stable condition at Staten Island University Hospital North, the NYPD said.
“It looks like he’s going to have a full recovery,” City Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) said.
The two officers responded to a domestic dispute call at a home on Bridge Court, near Tompkins Avenue, in Shore Acres at about 9:45 p.m. They found an intoxicated man who said “shoot me” while holding the knife, Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said at a news conference after the incident, which was caught on both the officers’ body cameras.
“You can see the male attempting to get past who we believe is his wife and coming at the officers,” Shea said. “You hear multiple times, ‘shoot me, shoot me, shoot me.’”
One of the officers struck the man with a Taser, but “the Taser did not stop the threat” as the man “made a move toward them,” O’Neill said.
Both officers then fired “up to 10 to 12 shots,” fatally striking the man, Shea said. One of the officers was also hit by the gunfire, he said.
O’Neill said the encounter unfolded in “very tight quarters.”
“It happened quickly,” he added.
Of the two officers, O’Neill said, the encounter was “a testament to how their training and focus is to de-escalate violence.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio visited the wounded officer and his family on Monday, his spokesman Eric Phillips said.
De Blasio also spoke with the “great doctors and hospital personnel” caring for the officer, Phillips added.
Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association labor union, said the incident “could have ended worse.”
“Here’s a situation where the police officers acted calmly amongst that chaos,” he said.
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.
