Dash, slash & slay
Cops shoot dead crazed LES beau
Cops fatally shot a man as he stabbed his transgender lover with a butcher knife in their Lower East Side apartment Friday morning, authorities said.
The 42-year-old victim had frantically called 911 at about 7 a.m. saying her partner was trying to kill her inside their home at 227 Cherry St., according to police sources.
“He’s in the back! He’s got a knife!” screamed the caller, who identifies as a woman.
When cops arrived, the victim, who had barricaded herself in the bathroom of the eighth-floor apartment, ran out and met them at the door, telling them the suspect was in the rear of the home, officials said.
Officers found the 33-year-old suspect, identified by sources as Josh Williams, hiding in a closet, police said. At first “this individual was calm and complaint while being escorted by officers toward the hallway,” NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan said.
But then the suspect suddenly broke away from police, grabbed an 11-inch knife from the kitchen, ran toward the victim and stabbed her multiple times, police said.
As Williams was knifing his girlfriend, two cops pulled their guns and fired a total of five shots, striking Williams in the torso and ending the attack, cops said. One officer fired three shots, and another got off two rounds.
“This happened in an instant,” Monahan said. “Within a second, as [the suspect] is walking out, he grabs that knife and immediately goes toward his domestic partner and begins stabbing [her]. At that point, the officers immediately took their weapons out and discharged.”
Both cops had body-cams on at the time, authorities said.
The attacker was taken to New-York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital in critical condition and died at 8:01 a.m.
The victim was rushed to Bellevue Hospital with non-lifethreatening slash wounds to the right side of her face and left shoulder, as well as a puncture wound on the right shoulder, authorities said.
Police said there was a history of violence between the pair — including in December, when Williams was arrested for allegedly stabbing her in the head with a sharp piece of wood in The Bronx.