NYPD officers shot three men, and killed one of them, across New York City in the span 12 violent hours Thursday.
The shootings began about 1:15 PM when cops squared off with a 78-year-old man inside his Bed-Stuy apartment. Police say he raised a gun at officers while they responded to a reported burglary in the home.
The elderly man—known as “Dad” to neighbors—ignored officers’ cries of “no,” prompting them to shoot, said NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.
“He clearly charged at officers with his gun,” Maddrey said. “We don’t know why.”
The man later died in a local hospital, police said.
Cops then responded to a call about an unhinged man had stabbed a 40-year-old security guard in the stomach inside a Jamaica church about 4 PM.
When police arrived, two cops fired two shots each at the man waving the knife around, hitting him twice, police said. But the man kept waving the knife and only let it go after cops used a Taser on him.
The security guard, knife-wielding man, and police were taken to nearby hospitals, and charges are pending, police said.
Finally, straphangers at a Bronx subway station at Broadway and West 238th Street nervously dialed 911 around 8 PM to report a man with a gun, said Michael Kemper, the NYPD’s transit bureau chief.
“The call is described as a man acting crazy, waving a gun at a crowd, which included children,” he said.
Cops scrambled to the scene saw a man apparently holding a gun, Kemper said. The man refused to drop the weapon and began walking along the train’s catwalk, and the police followed and cornered him.
After cops told him multiple times to drop his weapon, an officer fired one round that hit the man in the hand, causing him to drop it, Kemper said.
In a tweet, NYPD officials later identified the weapon as an “imitation pistol.”
Medics took the man to a local hospital.
