NEW YORK — A man acting erratically while armed with a knife outside a church in Queens has been fatally shot by New York City police officers after he stabbed a security guard, police say.
A woman said she saw the man behaving strangely outside the First Presbyterian Church on 164th Street in Jamaica shortly before 4 p.m., police said at a Thursday evening news conference. The woman went inside to call a security guard, who hoped to speak to the man.
When the security guard exited, he was stabbed once in the stomach and then returned inside the church to call 911, police said. Officers arrived shortly after and saw the man with the knife on the church grounds.
The man waved the knife at officers and approached them, while being told to drop the weapon, police say. He did not follow his orders and threw himself on the officers.
The two officers fired two shots each and the suspect was pinned down twice, police said. But the man still had a knife (pictured below) in his hand while he was on the ground and refused to drop it.
One of the officers then fired a Taser at the man, before they assisted him and took him to hospital. The 59-year-old is expected to survive.
The 40-year-old security guard was also taken to hospital, where he is believed to be recovering from his injury. During the press conference, the police praised the actions of the security guard, saying that the situation could have been much worse if the man had entered the church and the neighboring administrative building, where people were .
The suspect has not yet been identified, but police said they had no documented criminal history to their knowledge. Police did not say whether the suspect said anything specific to police or the security guard, saying only that he appeared mentally distraught as he yelled at officers.
The Queens incident marked one of three police shootings that day. In Brooklyn, a 78-year-old man was fatally shot by officers responding to a burglary call mid-afternoon on Lewis Avenue in Bed-Stuy, police said.
Later that evening, another person was shot by an NYPD officer in the Bronx. In that incident, the suspect was tracked down lanes near West 231st Street and Broadway in the Kingsbridge neighborhood, according to a senior police official. The suspect allegedly pointed a gun at the uniformed officers before an officer opened fire, hitting him.