Family of slain bipolar black man slams NYPD
He was holding metal rod, not gun
NEW YORK — The outraged family of a 34-year-old Brooklyn man killed by New York police officers on Wednesday lashed out against the department Thursday morning as they tried to cope with the black man’s death.
“It’s a piece of iron, and they kill him for a piece of iron,” Nora Ford, Saheed Vassell’s aunt, said bitterly, describing the object her nephew was holding.
Police mistook the metal rod Mr. Vassell was holding for a weapon and opened fire on him at Utica Avenue and Montgomery Street in Crown Heights about 4:40 p.m. Wednesday. The bullets struck Mr. Vassell, a welder, multiple times.
The death provoked hours of emotionally charged protests and has prompted the New York state attorney general to open an investigation.
The NYPD released a surveillance image after the shooting showing Mr. Vassell gripping the rod with both hands and pointing it at the mostly plainclothes cops arriving at the scene.
The shooting occurred as the nation paused to reflect on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King.
Police said they were responding to three 911 calls about Mr. Vassell after he started pointing the object — “described as a silver firearm” — at pedestrians.
The NYPD chief of department, Terence Monahan, said that, after being confronted by cops, he “took a two-handed shooting stance and pointed an object at the approaching officers,” three of whom were in street clothes, two in uniform.
Police on Wednesday did not address whether they gave Mr. Vassell any warnings. Three of the officers shot at Mr. Vassell, firing off 10 rounds.
According to Chief Monahan, the officers immediately rendered medical aid to Mr. Vassell, who was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
Chief Monahan held up an image of the scene captured seconds before the officers approached Mr. Vassell, and said surveillance video along the street corroborated the officers’ account of what happened. None of the officers was wearing body cameras, he said.
Many of Mr. Vassell’s family members and neighbors told reporters that he and his mental illness, he was bipolar, were well known to the area’s police and shopkeepers. The police department had encountered the man before and classified him as emotionally disturbed; the shooting raised questions about what the officers at the scene knew about him.