New York City police officers on Thursday fatally shot a man who barricaded himself in a room with a weapon at Brooklyn's New York Presbyterian Methodist Hospital.
Police started to receive multiple 911 calls at around 5:27pm about a man armed with a knife inside Methodist Hospital, according to Assistant Chief Charlie Minch, the Commanding Officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn South.
The calls stated that the man, who had been admitted to the hospital on Wednesday, had barricaded himself inside a room with other people and had cut himself and was trying to cut other people, Minch said at a press briefing. According to hospital staff, the man also threatened to kill them.
Officers arrived at the hospital at about 5:33pm and responded to the eighth floor, where they were met by a group of doctors, nurses and hospital security who said there was a man barricaded in a room with a knife.
When police officers got to the room, they saw blood all over the walls, floor and splattered across the exterior of the door. The man came into the door frame and displayed the bloody weapon. For more than three minutes, the officers stood outside the door and issued dozens of verbal commands to drop the weapon, Minch said.
The man refused to drop the weapon and forcefully tried to close the door to the room multiple times. Officers tried to open the door because there were two additional people that the man had trapped in the room, an elderly patient and a member of the hospital security staff who the man threatened to kill.
According to Minch, the man stepped towards the officers with the weapon in his hands and they simultaneously deployed a Taser and discharged a firearm. The Taser was ineffective and the man continued to try to close the door with the two individuals still inside.
For the next four minutes, officers again tried to kick the door open and issued many verbal commands to drop the weapon. The man then advanced towards the officers again with the weapon in his hand. Officers again deployed Tasers, but those deployments were not effective, Minch said.
Officers then discharged their weapons and the man was struck. He was pronounced deceased a short time later, Minch said.
"This situation could have turned out very differently," Minch said. "An individual threatened to kill hospital staff, barricaded himself inside of a room with an elderly patient and a member of hospital security with a weapon. Every day our officers put on their uniforms, they never know what kind of dangerous situation they are going to encounter. That is the risk that every member of the NYPD faces every single day to keep this city safe."
Due to patient privacy, the hospital system was not providing additional details, according to a spokesperson for NewYork-Presbyterian, adding that the hospital is open and accepting patients.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has emphasized the need for the city to create a new mental health emergency response team, said on X that the NYPD is conducting an investigation. At a press briefing at Brooklyn College on Friday, the mayor said his administration is talking about how a newly created Department of Community Safety could work in these types of situations.
"What I do appreciate, however, is that as we chart a new path forward, that we continue to have a Police Department that is responding to the needs that are in the immediate," he said. "I also recognize the difficulty that last night's situation presented for those officers in their act to swiftly to respond to it."
