‘You could see . . . how fearful the people were’
Blasio suggests cops justified in deadly ‘gun’-man confrontation
Mayor de Blasio on Friday all but justified the police shooting of a mentally ill Brooklyn man — as additional surveillance video showed passers-by fleeing in terror as the maniac ran amok with a gun-like object.
During his weekly appearance on WNYC radio, de Blasio said all available evidence suggested that cops had no choice but to open fire on Saheed Vassell, 34.
The mayor cited transcripts of witnesses’ 911 calls and the private surveillance videos that show Vassell striding through Crown Heights while pointing the object — which cops identified Friday as the head of a soldering torch.
“If you have a situation where someone may, in fact, be pointing a gun at innocent bystanders and act- ing menacingly, which the video shows happened repeatedly, you don’t wait to call help on the scene,” de Blasio said.
“You could see in those transcripts how fearful the people in the streets were for their own safety.”
De Blasio hedged his remarks by insisting that “until we have all the facts, we can’t pass judgment.”
“But,” he added, “we do know that this took place in such a fast time sequence that the normal concepts of reaching the officers who are normally on that beat, etc., may not have even been conceivable in this kind of literally a few minutes’ time span.”
Hours after the mayor’s remarks, the NYPD released a compilation of video clips that show Vassell striding south on Utica Avenue toward his fatal confrontation with cops.
The two-minute video starts with footage of an unidentified man duck- ing and scrambling out of an Eastern Parkway crosswalk as Vassell advances on him with his arm extended.
Another man is seen leaping to his left as Vassell approaches and sticks his right hand toward the man’s face.
And a person with a shopping cart quickly gets up off a bench and crosses the sidewalk after apparently seeing Vassell approach. Vassell then raises both arms, using his right fist to point a silver-colored tube at the person’s face.
A fourth person is seen running away and putting their hands up after Vassell passes and doubles back, motioning like he’s firing a weapon.
The video clips, edited to pan and zoom in on the action, were stitched together with four others released Thursday, including one that shows Vassell assuming a combat stance and using both hands to point toward an intersection.
The NYPD says that’s the moment when four cops responding to 911 calls fired 10 shots shortly after 4:40 p.m. Wednesday at Utica Avenue and Montgomery Street.
Vassell was hit by at least seven rounds, suffering deadly wounds to the brain, aorta and spinal cord, according to the city Medical Examiner’s Office.
The NYPD said Friday of the four cops who fired shots, one was African-American and fired three rounds; a second was white and fired two; a third was white and fired four rounds; and the fourth was Indian-American and fired once.
Thursday night, several hundred protesters marched from the shooting scene to the 71st Precinct station house, chanting slogans including, “NYPD! KKK! How many kids did you kill today?”
Dozens of demonstrators carried signs provided by the Party for Socialism & Liberation and the Workers World Party, both of which tout themselves as “revolutionary” organizations that oppose capitalism in favor of Marxist and Leninist political philosophy.
Some of the signs read, “NYPD: Biggest GANG in New York” and “NYPD: RAPISTS MURDERERS THIEVES.”
At one point, a neighborhood group called Gangsters Making Astronomical Community Changes got into a verbal tussle with a masked group who said they were affiliated with the anarchistic protesters Black Bloc.
“You’re dividing the move- ment,” a member of GMACC said to the outsiders. “Show your face.”
“I ain’t doing sh-t,” a female protester responded.
The superintendent at the building where Vassell lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his parents, brother and sister said she often spotted him smoking and drinking in the fourth-floor stairwell.
Blanca Martinez, 44, said Vassell favored vodka, usually Georgi, and 16-ounce cans of King Cobra malt liquor.
“Sometimes, I would tell him, ‘Jesus loves you,’ ” she said.
Vassell would reply, “F--k Jesus. Jesus doesn’t help me . . . the devil help me,” she said.
Martinez also showed The Post an assemblage of junk that Vassell had stashed on the roof of the apartment building at 826 Crown St.
The hoard included an old shoe, a braided stainless-steel water-supply line, discarded electronic items, several disposable plastic gloves, and a lottery ticket — without a single winning number — for the Aug. 20, 2013, Mega Millions drawing.
There was also a torn envelope that was mailed to Vassell’s father, Eric Vassell, with a return address in Wellington, Fla., a sticker that says, “I Love You!” with a red heart and a sketch of a humanoid figure wearing a crown. Additional reporting by Shawn Cohen