Dramatic video shows the moment an NYPD cop opened fire on a knife-wielding man inside a Bronx apartment building — which sources say may have resulted from a language barrier between the Spanish-speaking man and the cops.
The 32-year-old Spanish-speaking man – armed with a large kitchen knife – was shot once in the torso in the stairway of the East 148th Street building in Mott Haven Sunday evening with a language barrier likely a factor, police and sources said.
A neighbor’s Ring doorbell footage captures the moment a group of officers walk down the hall, where they encounter the man, who is not visible in the footage.
Muffled voices can be heard in the clip, though their exact exchange is difficult to decipher. Deputy Chief Rohan Griffith said in a late Sunday press conference that cops repeatedly demanded that the man drop the knife.
The footage then shows a female cop encountering the man – who remains out of view – and yells, “Wait, wait!” before firing off two rounds.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!” the officer screams into her radio.
“Oh my God! I need assistance! I need a bus!” the officer yells as she runs back and forth down the hallway. “Oh my God! I have a male shot! I need a bus!”
Law enforcement sources now say that the wounded man – who was hospitalized in stable condition – may not have understood the officers’ commands.
Additionally, the officers’ commands to “wait” are not aligned with the NYPD’s training in such situations, the sources said.
Finally, the shooting victim was merely holding the knife to confront an air conditioner thief he’d previously called 911 about, according to the sources.
The 911 caller was connected with a Spanish translator, and officers headed to the scene, the sources said.
But responding cops — who spoke English — were confused with the odd building layout and immediately went up to the second floor, while the caller was still downstairs, the sources said.
A separate Ring camera video shows the caller clutching a knife in one hand as he confronted another man – apparently the thief – in an outdoor alleyway.
Meanwhile, the officers had made their way back downstairs.
The moment the knifeman went back inside – closing the door behind him – two shots can be heard, followed by the officer’s scream.
The knife-wielding man was not pointing the weapon at cops, but instead may have been trying to point past the officers toward the direction of the AC unit thief, the sources said.
Neighbor Juan Rivera, 78, who provided the Ring camera footage, said the wounded man – who he knew “for a long time” – is a “Mexican guy and that day he was completely drunk.”
“You can hear him when he talk to the police, the way he talk, he’s completely out of his mind,” said Rivera, who has lived in his apartment for 56 years. “The lady there talked to him in English and he told them he doesn’t speak English and they see the knife and they start shooting two times.”
Rivera said the language barrier – and the knifeman’s intoxicated state – may have complicated matters.
“I told the detectives, when you have a situation like this, bring somebody that speaks Spanish and can control the situation and maybe they can avoid this,” Rivera said. “But they send 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 got so much training at the police academy and they’re not teaching that. They should know.”
Rivera said he had returned from walking one of his dogs, Cluey, when he encountered the multiple cops who descended on the scene of the shooting.
He also was there when the ambulance arrived.
“What happened when they brought the ambulance services is they covered his face,” Rivera said. “They don’t want anybody to see his face.”
Rivera described the video as “shameful” and that he’d never seen 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 and me and my dogs here.”
“It’s a shame we got a lot of theft, we got 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.”
