NEW YORK (AP) - Police fatally shot a man who threatened his mother with a screwdriver and wouldn’t drop it as he struggled with officers in a New York City home, a police official said Saturday.
Officers arrived to the sounds of screaming at a Queens house around 3:30 a.m. and found the man holding his mother and threatening her with the tool in a stairwell to the basement, Chief of Patrol Terence Monahan said. A 911 caller had told authorities she was yelling, “He’s going to kill me!”
Monahan said preliminary information gathered in the hours after the shooting indicates the uniformed officers struggled with the man and freed his mother after he refused orders to drop the screwdriver. Monahan said that as the scuffle continued, officers shot the man after a stun gun missed and he continued to wield the tool.
“It’s a dangerous weapon,” Monahan said. “A screwdriver, you can be stabbed with, the same as you can be stabbed with a knife.”
Monahan said two officers fired, each hitting the man once. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. His mother was uninjured.
The identities of all involved haven’t been released. A possible phone number for the home wasn’t working later Saturday.
The home is on Westgate Street, in the Springfield Gardens neighborhood. Police work continued into the afternoon on the block of semi-attached houses, where residents leave parking spaces open in front of one another’s homes out of neighborliness.
“It’s a quiet place. We don’t have any problems,” said resident Maverly Mullings.
There have been other police shootings in New York City during the first two weeks of the new year.
Police said they shot and killed a man who fired a gun into a lounge and turned it on officers in Brooklyn on Jan. 4, hours after fatally shooting another man officers said came at them with a large knife and shrugged off a stun gun blast in a Brooklyn home the night before.
On Jan. 6, police said officers shot and wounded a man who drew a gun on them in Staten Island.
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