New York Post

DeB ripped after $2M slay-cop verdict

- Kaja Whitehouse

The mother of a mentally ill man shot dead by cops in his Harlem apartment was awarded $2.2 million Tuesday — and her lawyer promptly blasted Mayor de Blasio for letting the case go to trial in the first place.

“I put this at the feet of our progressiv­e mayor,” lawyer Randy McLauglin said outside of a Manhattan federal courthouse after scoring the award on behalf of Hawa Bah, mother of Mohamed Bah. “Why this case even went to trial is a mystery to me.”

Bah sued the city in 2013 claiming cops wrongfully killed her mentally ill son in 2012 after she called for an ambulance because he had been acting strangely.

Instead of getting medical help, the 28-year-old student and taxi driver was carried out on a stretcher with eight bullet wounds.

It later emerged that cops shot Bah after prying his door open to see what he was doing inside.

The NYPD claimed cops shot Bah because he lunged at Officer Edwin Mateo with a 13-inch kitchen knife, wounding him. But Mateo was never treated for any such wound and later testified that he could not remember being stabbed.

The 10-person jury found that Bah was indeed hold- ing a kitchen knife, but they determined that he had not been moving toward Mateo in a threatenin­g manner at the time he was shot. “We respect but strongly disagree with the jury’s verdict,” said Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department.

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