Multiple police officers in Brooklyn on Wednesday fatally shot a man who was pointing a metal pipe at them while they were responding to reports of a man threatening people with a firearm, according to the NYPD.
The shooting happened shortly before 5 p.m. in the area of Montgomery St. and Utica Ave. in Crown Heights, the NYPD said.
Police said officers were investigating several 911 calls of a man pointing what they said appeared to be a silver firearm at people on the street when they encountered a man matching the description.
Police said the man "took a two-handed shooting stance'' and approached the officers.
Four officers, three in plainclothes and one in uniform, then fired a total of 10 shots, striking the man, police said.
The man was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Eric Vassell, a Crown Heights man who lives near the scene, told NY1 on Wednesday night that the man police shot was Saheed Vassell, his son. Vassell said his 35-year-old son suffered from bipolar disorder but was harmless.
"He's polite, nice, he's kind. He just comes and he goes," Eric Vassell said.
Police described the object, seen to the right, that the man shot was holding as a metal pipe with a nob at the end.
Sources originally told NY1 that police shot the man after he did not drop a gun when officers told him to.
The NYPD is investigating the shooting. Mayor Bill de Blasio has been briefed.
Police officials said three people called 911 describing the pipe as a firearm.
The NYPD said they have video evidence of the encounter but officers were not wearing body cameras.
Community members shouted down police near the scene of the shooting Wednesday night.
"Why didn't they taser him? Why didn't they shoot him on the leg?" one man said near the scene after the shooting.
"These police are murderers, and you know it too. In every state, they murder black people and they get away with it," said a woman near the scene. "We have to take action or we won't get justice."
