N.Y.P.D. Officer Saved by Vest in Harlem Shooting as Naked Suspect Is Killed
Officers responding to a report of a dispute fired at a man with a gun during a struggle in a building hallway, the police said.
ByJames C. McKinley Jr.
Police officers shot and killed a naked man armed with a gun during a struggle in the hallway of a Harlem building just after 2 a.m. on Wednesday, law enforcement officials said. One officer was also hit by a bullet during the confrontation but survived.
It was the fifth deadly shooting by the New York police in the last month.
Eight uniformed officers had responded to a call from a woman in the building who said someone had been banging on her door and breaking glass. They were searching the second-floor hallway of 2785 Frederick Douglass Boulevard when one of the officers encountered a naked man armed with a 9-millimeter pistol, the police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, said.
“A violent struggle immediately began and shots were fired,” the commissioner said.
The officer yelled for help as he struggled with the man and other officers opened fire, hitting the man several times, mortally wounding him. The officer who was grappling with the man was also hit, but his bulletproof vest stopped the slug, the commissioner said.
The man, 27, was taken to Harlem Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He had been arrested and accused of domestic violence in the past, the commissioner said. It was unclear if he had fired his gun.
The officer who was shot was also punched several times in the face and was being treated at a hospital. The officer, 32, who was not identified, had been on the force for seven years.
The police have shot and killed five people since Sept. 29, when Officer Brian Mulkeen was killed in a police fusillade while struggling with an armed man in the Bronx.
On Oct. 15, in two separate encounters, officers fatally shot two armed men, one in the Gowanus Houses in Brooklyn, and one at the 225th Street subway station in the Bronx. Two days later, also in the Bronx, a police sergeant shot and killed a man during a traffic stop.
Officer Mulkeen was the second officer to be killed by friendly fire this year. Earlier this year, Detective Brian Simonsen was hit in the chest and killed as he and other officers were firing at a robber in a cellphone store in Queens. The robber turned out to have a fake gun.
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