Dramatic video depicts the moment when an NYPD officer fired shots at a man wielding a knife inside a Bronx apartment building hallway after he called them to report an alleged robbery, according to sources.
The 32-year-old man, who only spoke Spanish, was armed with a large kitchen knife and was shot once in the torso in the stairway of the East 148th Street building in Mott Haven on Sunday evening. The language barrier likely played a role in the incident, as per police and sources.
A neighbor’s Ring doorbell footage captured a group of officers walking down the hall, encountering the man who was not visible in the video.
The clip contains muffled voices, with the exact exchange being hard to decipher. Deputy Chief Rohan Griffith mentioned in a press conference that officers repeatedly asked the man to drop the knife.
The footage then shows a female officer encountering the man, who is out of view, and shouting, “Wait, wait!” before firing two shots.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!” the officer yells into her radio.
“Oh my God! I need assistance! I need a bus!” she exclaims while running back and forth in the hallway. “Oh my God! I have a male shot! I need a bus!”
Law enforcement sources now suggest that the injured man, who was hospitalized in stable condition, may not have understood the officers’ commands.
Furthermore, the officers’ commands to “wait” did not align with the NYPD’s training in such situations, the sources added.
It was revealed that the man with the knife was simply trying to confront an air conditioner thief he had previously reported to 911, according to sources.
The 911 caller was connected with a Spanish translator, and officers were dispatched to the scene, the sources mentioned.
However, responding officers, who spoke English, were confused by the building’s layout and went up to the second floor immediately, while the caller was still downstairs, according to the sources.
Another Ring camera video shows the caller holding a knife as he confronted another man, presumably the thief, in an outdoor alleyway.
Meanwhile, the officers had returned downstairs.
When the man with the knife went back inside and closed the door behind him, two shots were heard, followed by the officer’s scream.
The man with the knife was not pointing the weapon at the officers but may have been trying to indicate the direction of the AC unit thief, the sources stated.
Neighbor Juan Rivera, 78, who provided the Ring camera footage, mentioned that the injured man, whom he had known for a long time, was Mexican and was intoxicated that day.
“You can hear him when he talks to the police, the way he talks, he’s completely out of his mind,” Rivera said. “The lady there spoke to him in English, and he told them he doesn’t speak English, and they saw the knife and started shooting two times.”
Rivera believed that the language barrier and the man’s intoxicated state complicated the situation.
“I told the detectives, when you have a situation like this, bring somebody who speaks Spanish and can control the situation, and maybe they can avoid this,” Rivera said. “But they sent somebody who speaks English when he doesn’t speak English. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What’s going to happen?” the neighbor added. “Maybe that person is going to get killed or somebody else. When they made those shots, you see they shot into someone’s door. They could hit anybody, innocent people.”
“I don’t know why they have so much training at the police academy and they’re not teaching that. They should know,” Rivera concluded.
Rivera mentioned that he returned from walking his dog, Cluey, when he saw multiple officers at the scene of the shooting.
He was also present when the ambulance arrived.
“When the ambulance services arrived, they covered his face,” Rivera said. “They didn’t want anybody to see his face.”
Rivera described the video as “shameful” and stated that he had never witnessed such a scene in his life.
“My father grew up here; all my kids grew up here,” he said. “Right now, it’s only my wife, me, and my dogs here.”
“It’s a shame we have a lot of theft, we have a lot of people coming and stealing things every day,” he added. “[Building management] spent a lot of money on those cameras, and they do not work.”
Please rewrite the following sentence:
“The cat quickly ran across the street before the rain started.”
“The cat sprinted across the street just in time before the rain began.”
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