Dramatic footage shows the moment an NYPD officer opened fire on a knife-wielding man in the hallway of a Bronx apartment building after being called to the apartment for a suspected robbery, officials said.
A 32-year-old Spanish-speaking man armed with a large kitchen knife was shot once in the torso Sunday evening on the steps of an East 148th Street building in Mott Haven, and police say a language barrier was likely a factor. A source announced. .
Neighborhood Ring doorbell footage captured the moment a group of officers walked down a hallway where they encountered a man who was not seen in the video.
Muffled voices can be heard in the clip, but the exact exchange is difficult to decipher. Deputy Chief Rohan Griffiths said at a news conference late Sunday that officers repeatedly asked the man to drop the knife.
The video then shows a female police officer encountering the man (who is not in her sight) and yelling, “Wait, wait!” before firing two shots.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!” the officer yelled into his radio.
“Oh my god! I need help! I need a bus!” the officer yelled as she paced up and down the hallway. “Oh my god! There's a male shot! I need a bus!”
Law enforcement officials now say the injured man, who is hospitalized in stable condition, may not have understood the officers' commands.
Additionally, the officer's command to “wait” was inconsistent with NYPD training in such situations, officials said.
In the end, the shooting victim only had a knife to confront the air conditioner thief, who had previously called 911, sources said.
The 911 caller was connected to a Spanish interpreter, and officers were dispatched to the scene.
However, the responding officer (who spoke English) was confused by the building's odd layout and immediately went upstairs, even though the caller was still downstairs.
Another Ring camera video shows the caller holding a knife in one hand and confronting another man, apparently the burglar, in an alley outside.
Meanwhile, the officers had gone back downstairs.
As the knifeman returned inside and closed the door behind him, two gunshots were heard, followed by the screams of police officers.
The man with the knife may not have been pointing the gun at the officers, but instead may have been trying to point it past the officers and in the direction of the AC unit thieves, officials said.
Juan Rivera, 78, a neighbor who provided camera footage of the ring, said he had known the injured man “for a long time” and that he was “a Mexican and completely drunk that day.”
“You can hear him talking to the police, and the way he speaks, he's completely insane,” said Rivera, who has lived in the apartment complex for 56 years. “A woman there spoke to him in English and he said he didn't speak English, so he saw the knife and started firing twice.”
Mr Rivera said the language barrier and the knifeman's intoxication could have complicated matters.
“I told the detectives that if you ever find yourself in a situation like this, bring in someone who speaks Spanish and can control the situation, and maybe you can avoid it.” Rivera said. “But they send someone who doesn't speak English to someone who speaks English. It doesn't make sense.”
“What's going to happen?” added the neighbor. “Maybe that person or someone else could be killed. When they fired, you could see they were firing into someone's door. They could be whoever they are, hitting innocent people. .
“I don't know why they have so much training in the police academy and they don't teach it. They should know.”
Rivera said he was returning from walking his dog, Kruey, when he encountered several police officers who had descended on the scene of the shooting.
He was also at the scene when the ambulance arrived.
“The ambulance came and what happened was they covered his face,” Rivera said. “They don't want anyone to see his face.”
Rivera called the video “embarrassing” and said he had never seen anything like it in his life.
“My father grew up here. All my children grew up here,” he said. “Right now, it's just my wife and I and our dog.”
“It's unfortunate that there is a lot of theft. A lot of people come and steal things every day,” he added. “[Building management] I spent a lot of money on those cameras and they don't work. ”
