‘A RIGHTEOUS SHOOTING’
Bx. cops kill man who slashed girlfriend, held knife to mom’s throat
A Bronx man had just slashed his girlfriend and was threatening to cut his mother’s throat when a police officer fatally shot him from 5 feet away, NYPD brass said Saturday.
“The cops were in the right. They did what they had to do,” the husband of the woman who had the knife to her throat told the Daily News.
“It was either her son or my wife,” said the man, who witnessed the shooting. He asked that his name not be used.
“These officers were met with a chaotic, fast-moving situation, but they had great composure,” NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said at a press conference outside the shooting scene, an apartment building on Creston Ave. near Minerva Place in Bedford Park.
Chell said the officers’ actions “saved the life” of the knife-wielding man’s mother. Sources said she is 45 or 46 years old.
A 911 call summoned two 52nd Precinct officers to the 13th-floor apartment at about 11:15 a.m. on Saturday.
As the officers arrived, the knife-wielding man’s 19-year-old girlfriend “came screaming out of the apartment with a slice wound to her face,” Chell said.
The officers stepped into the apartment and confronted the 30-year-old man in a cramped kitchen.
“The subject was holding his mother in a headlock with a large carving knife to her throat, and she was clearly injured and bleeding,” Chell said.
According to the woman’s husband, the police told her son three times: “Let down the knife. Let her go.”
“He said, ‘Either kill me or I kill her,’ ” the husband recounted. “At that point, he grabbed her by the throat even harder. He had her in a headlock.”
“He raised her upward, and was about to do the knife, when the cop shot him.”
The bullet hit the knife-wielding man in the head, said Chell.
“One shot. Single bullet,” said the woman’s husband. “If he wouldn’t have done that, my wife would be dead. … He was using her as a human shield.
“It happened. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. … The cops are not at fault on this one. It was a righteous shooting and thank God it happened, because if not —”
EMS rushed the shot man to St. Barnabas Hospital. He could not be saved. His name was not immediately released.
The two responding officers, who Chell said have been with the NYPD for about two years, were taken to an area hospital for observation. At least one of the two wounded women was taken to a hospital for treatment.
The wild confrontation was caught on the officers’ body-worn cameras, Chell said.
The fatally shot man had a record of two assault arrests and one drug arrest, said police sources. The woman’s husband confirmed the arrests.
Chell said cops had gone to the apartment on domestic violence calls — but the dead man had no documented mental health history with the NYPD.
A neighbor, James Watson, said relatives of the dead man told him he had mental health issues. “He was going through mood swings” since Friday night, Watson said.
“I’ve taken him to rehab — everything else,” the woman’s husband said. “He was supposed to stay clean.”
“It’s a tough job for our cops to handle,” Chell said. “Today was a complete tragedy during this holiday season. Thank God the cops got there quickly and saved this family from further harm.”