A 34-year-old man holding a large knife to his mother’s neck was shot and critically wounded by an officer inside a Bronx apartment, police said Friday.
The Thursday night drama was described by Chief of Patrol Philip Rivera as a tense standoff “in which our officers were confronted with a dangerous and difficult situation and ultimately saved a woman’s life.”
The encounter started when a security guard at an apartment building near Mulford Ave. and Libby Place called 911 at 11:20 p.m. to report that he heard screaming inside an apartment and that he believed the suspect was trying to “harm himself.”
But Rivera said when two cops — an officer and a sergeant, both from the 45th Precinct — got to the apartment door and were let in by a relative they found the suspect in the back threatening to kill his 61-year-old mother.
“The male had his left arm around his mother’s neck and a large kitchen knife in his right hand,” Rivera said. “For over 2½ minutes, our officers attempted to get the male to put the knife down and free his mother. As our officers were attempting this, the male made numerous threats to kill his mother, all while he was still holding her with his arm around her neck and holding the knife.
“Numerous times during this interaction the male moved the knife towards his mother’s neck.”
The confrontation was captured on police body-worn cameras, though Rivera didn’t describe the moment just before an officer fired one shot, felling the son and freeing his mother.
Medics rushed the son to Jacobi Medical Center, where he is listed in critical condition.
“The woman thankfully was not physically injured.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what set off the suspect, or if he has documented mental health issues.
The incident is the ninth this year in which NYPD officers shot a suspect. Four of them were armed with knives.
On Monday, an officer in Brooklyn shot and killed Juumane Wright, 28, when he nearly struck the officer in a stolen Porsche as he attempted to get past a NYPD roadblock on the Belt Parkway near East New York.
Wright last November was among 10 suspects indicted by the feds in Pennsylvania, accused of being part of an interstate stolen car ring.
