NYC Police Shoot, Kill Man They Say Ran at Them With Knife in Crown Heights

Police shot and killed a man they said charged at officers with a knife on a Brooklyn street after they told him to drop it and used stun guns on him.

Police haven’t yet been able to identify the man, and it’s unclear whether there were any witnesses to the confrontation around 4:15 a.m. Monday on Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood. Police said the encounter was captured on officers’ body cameras; no video has been released yet.

Assistant Chief Michael Kemper said the information gathered so far shows police got a call about a man with a knife and a gun — no gun was ultimately found — and found him with the roughly 7-inch-long knife in one hand and the other in a coat pocket.

Officers repeatedly told the man to drop the knife and show his hands as he ignored them and walked down into the nearby Crown Heights-Utica Avenue subway station, Kemper said. He said two officers used their stun guns on the man, to no apparent effect, and he went back to the street, where some other officers again told him to put down the weapon.

“It was at this point that he ran, literally ran, at one of the officers with the knife,” Kemper said.

Then two officers fired a total of about 10 shots, he said, noting that the information was preliminary.

The man was hit in the torso and was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital, Kemper said.