The lethal encounter between police and an elderly Brooklyn man was over almost as soon as it started.
Neighbor Norma Martinez, 70, said her son buzzed two officers inside the building after they answered the call for a burglary in progress, with the situation escalating in an instant after the cops reached the second floor to find the man holding a handgun.
“We hear ‘Boom boom boom!’” she recalled Friday. “I heard them like firecrackers. I don’t know what happened here, but why would you call the cops over a robbery and answer the door with a gun?”
The 78-year-old man, with the gun in his left hand, opened the door after the officers knocked Thursday afternoon, police said. He pointed the weapon at the cops before they fired seven shots on Thursday afternoon, with the victim pronounced dead at Woodhull Hospital, police said.
The victim’s gun was illegally owned, police said Friday. Authorities said the dead man had no prior interactions with the NYPD before the shooting, and the whole episode lasted less than two minutes.
Martinez recalled her elderly neighbor as struggling with health issues.
“That old man couldn’t even walk,” she said. “He had to use a cane everywhere. But he did do everything himself, groceries and laundry … I know one thing for certain, that old man did not deserve to die.”
The officers responded to the Lewis Ave. building after getting a call from the victim’s nephew, who said the senior citizen reached out to him with the report of a suspected break-in at the apartment, police said. The whole encounter was captured on the officers’ body cameras, police said.
According to NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, the officers were in the narrow hallway outside when the man opened the door and stepped outside with the weapon in his left hand before leveling the gun at the two cops.
“He clearly charged at the officers with his gun,” said Maddrey. “We don’t know why yet.”