The investigation continues into a Bronx police shooting on Friday night in which officers gunned down a man who fired a pellet gun at them.
Police officials said the shooting happened at about 7 p.m. on May 13 near the corner of Hunts Point and Seneca Avenues in Hunts Point.
According to Assistant Chief Philip Rivera, commanding officer of NYPD Patrol Borough Bronx, two plain-clothed NYPD narcotics detectives, while conducting an investigation in the area, overheard the man involved in a verbal dispute with another individual. The officer overheard the man say that he was going to his car to get a gun.
Rivera said the detectives dispatched a description of the man to other detectives at the scene. Moments later, officers observed the man exiting from a nearby pickup truck holding a gun in his hand.
“The male with the gun walked onto the sidewalk where a detective was walking toward him,” Rivera said at a press conference Friday evening. “The suspect was then given a verbal command: ‘Police, don’t move.’ The suspect then raised his gun and fired one time at the detective, just missing the detective’s head.”
The gun that the man fired, which police recovered afterward, turned out to be a Bernard airsoft pistol. Assistant Chief Timothy McCormack, commanding officer of Patrol Borough Bronx Detectives Bureau, noted, “For all intents and purposes, it looks exactly like a semi-automatic firearm.”
Nevertheless, Rivera explained, the fired shot prompted the detective and a sergeant with him to return fire. They blasted 10 shots at the man, striking him five times in the torso.
EMS rushed the man to Lincoln Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police have not released his identity.
McCormack said the man had 10 prior arrests, including a felony assault conviction dating back to 1988.
The two officers involved in the shooting were taken to a local hospital for evaluation, Rivera noted.
The case has been presented to the NYPD Force Investigation Division, which examines all police shootings.
