A man who was acting erratically while armed with a knife outside a Queens church was shot by NYPD officers after he stabbed security guard, according to police.
A woman said she saw the man behaving strangely outside the First Presbyterian Church on 164th Street in Jamaica just before 4 p.m., police said at a Thursday evening press conference. The woman went inside to get a security guard, whom she hoped would be able to engage with the man.
When the security guard went outside, he was stabbed one time in the stomach, then went back inside the church to call 911, police said. Officers arrived a short time later, and saw the man with the knife on church grounds.
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The man waved the knife at officers and approached them, as they told him to drop the weapon, according to police. He did not follow their commands, and came at the officers.
The two officers fired two times each, and the suspect was stuck twice, police said. But the man still had a knife (pictured below) in his hand as he was on the ground, and refused to drop it.
One of the officers then fired a stun gun at the man, before both provided aid and got him to the hospital. The 59-year-old man is expected to survive.
The 40-year-old security guard was also taken to the hospital, where he was said to be recovering from his injury. Police at the press conference commended the actions of the security guard, saying that the situation could have been much worse had the man gone inside the church and administrative building close by, where people were inside.
"He did a great job at confronting the male with the knife and maybe stopping that man from getting into the building ," said NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell.
The suspect has not yet been identified. Police said he has a documented record of mental illness, but no known criminal history. Police did not say if the suspect said anything in particular to police or the security guard, only noting that he appeared to be mentally distressed as he yelled sounds at officers.
A neighbor said he's known the man for 22 years, and used to live in the same building on the block.
"He’s very respectful, so it’s like, I never got anything to escalate his mental illness. But I know he had a mental illness, but he’s a nice guy. He wasn’t violent never with me after 22 years, never violent," said Clarence Marrison. "Never known him with a weapon, never."
The Queens incident marked the one of three police shootings of the day. In Brooklyn, a 78-year-old man was shot and killed by officers responding to a burglary call in the middle of the afternoon on Lewis Avenue in Bed-Stuy, police said.
Later in the evening, another person was shot by an NYPD officer in the Bronx. In that incident, police opened fire on a suspect who was said to be waving a gun near a crowd of people at an elevated train station, according police. The gun in that incident turned out to be an air pistol, but was made to very closely resemble a real handgun.
