USA | Man killed by police fire outside a church after opening fire

Defence Redefined

14/12/2020

A man was shot by New York police on Sunday after he opened fire with two pistols, apparently not targeting anyone, shortly after a choir chanted Christmas carols outside the cathedral in the heart of Manhattan, screaming at the same time “shoot me”, “kill me”.

No one else was injured in the blaze outside Manhattan St John the Divine Cathedral, said New York Police Chief, Dermot Shea.

Three police officers who intervened at the scene shot at the man, whose details have not been made public, about fifteen times. They hit him at least once in the head, Shea clarified.

According to Shea, the police retrieved the two pistols and a backpack the man was holding, which contained a container of gasoline, ropes, cables and knives.

A New York City police spokesman said earlier that police officers were using their service weapons when the man opened fire, about fifteen minutes after the choir’s chants were over and while the crowd gathered – a few hundred people – was leaving. The spokesman said that the man opened fire “against the police”, something that was not confirmed by eyewitnesses.

According to a French Agency reporter present, “I heard two or three gunshots”, “I looked up and saw, probably ten meters away from me, on the steps, a guy shooting.”

“I saw blaze” coming out of the gun, which seemed to her, in her words, like a “cannon,” before adding that she was in a hurry to look for a place to “cover up to escape.”

Martha Stoli, who was also there, said the man shot eight or ten times before he was shot by the police. “He opened fire without targeting anyone”, she stressed and added that the man was shouting “shoot me, kill me!”

According to a Reuters news reporter who was also an eyewitness, police officers ordered the man to drop his weapons on the ground, without being heard, before opening fire.

Photographs taken show the man in a black winter coat, a white baseball cap and a mask in the colors of the Dominican Republic, wielding two pistols, one in each hand.

The suspect was taken to a local hospital in critical condition. Shea later told reporters he had succumbed.

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Source: ANA MPA / * Archive photo