NEW YORK: Officers responding to reports of a man threatening people with a gun fatally shot a man carrying a metal pipe, mistaking it for a firearm, the New York Police Department said.
A tense crowd gathered after Saheed Vassell, 34, was killed around 5 p.m. Wednesday in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Police had encountered the man before and classified him as emotionally disturbed, according to The New York Times .
Three 911 callers reported that a “man was pointing a silver firearm at people on the street,” according to NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan.
Five officers responded and encountered a man matching the description in the 911 calls.
“The suspect took a two-handed shooting stance and pointed an object at the approaching officers, two of whom were in uniform,” Monahan said.
Four of the officers then fired a total of 10 rounds, striking the man, who was later found to be holding a “pipe with some sort of knob at the end,” he said.
Vassell was pronounced dead at a hospital; four officers were treated for minor injuries.
Dozens of police cars converged on the area, and a crowd of about 200 people gathered around the cordoned-off intersection, said 33-year-old resident Shaya Tenenbaum, who added that a few people in the crowd shouted at police.
Andre Wilson, 38, told the Daily News that he had known the victim for 20 years, describing him as a quirky neighborhood character.
“All he did was just walk around the neighborhood,” he said. “He speaks to himself, usually he has an orange Bible or a rosary in his hand. He never had a problem with anyone.”
Wilson said he was shocked that it would come to this.
“The officers from the neighborhood, they know him. He has no issue with violence. Everybody just knows he’s just mentally challenged. This shouldn’t have happened at all.”
The shooting comes after the police killing of an unarmed black man on March 18 in Sacramento, California, sparked two weeks of protests and calls for police reform.
Stephon Clark, 22, was shot by officers responding to a report of someone breaking car windows. Police said they thought he had a gun, but he was carrying only a cellphone.
In a private autopsy commissioned by Clark’s family, prominent pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu announced that Clark was hit by eight bullets — six in the back, one in the neck and one in the thigh — and took three to 10 minutes to die. Police waited about five minutes before rendering medical aid.
NYC police fatally shoot man carrying metal pipe
NYC police fatally shoot man carrying metal pipe
- Three 911 callers reported that a “man was pointing a silver firearm at people on the street.”
- Four officers fired a total of 10 rounds, striking the man, who was later found to be holding a “pipe with some sort of knob at the end.”
Culture being strangled by Kosovo’s political crisis
- Cultural institutions have been among the hardest-hit sectors, as international funding dried up and local decisions were stalled by the parliamentary crisis
PRIZREN: Kosovo’s oldest cinema has been dark and silent for years as the famous theater slowly disintegrates under a leaky roof.
Signs warn passers-by in the historic city of Prizren that parts of the Lumbardhi’s crumbling facade could fall while it waits for its long-promised refurbishment.
“The city deserves to have the cinema renovated and preserved. Only junkies gathering there benefit from it now,” nextdoor neighbor butcher Arsim Futko, 62, told AFP.
For seven years, it waited for a European Union-funded revamp, only for the money to be suddenly withdrawn with little explanation.
Now it awaits similar repairs promised by the national government that has since been paralyzed by inconclusive elections in February.
And it is anyone’s guess whether the new government that will come out of Sunday’s snap election will keep the promise.
- ‘Collateral damage’ -
Cinema director Ares Shporta said the cinema has become “collateral damage” in a broader geopolitical game after the EU hit his country with sanctions in 2023.
The delayed repairs “affected our morale, it affected our lives, it affected the trust of the community in us,” Shporta said.
Brussels slapped Kosovo with sanctions over heightened tensions between the government and the ethnic Serb minority that live in parts of the country as Pristina pushed to exert more control over areas still tightly linked to Belgrade.
Cultural institutions have been among the hardest-hit sectors, as international funding dried up and local decisions were stalled by the parliamentary crisis.
According to an analysis by the Kosovo think tank, the GAP Institute for Advanced Studies, sanctions have resulted in around 613 million euros ($719 million) being suspended or paused, with the cultural sector taking a hit of 15-million-euro hit.
- ‘Ground zero’ -
With political stalemate threatening to drag on into another year, there are warnings that further funding from abroad could also be in jeopardy.
Since February’s election when outgoing premier Albin Kurti topped the polls but failed to win a majority, his caretaker government has been deadlocked with opposition lawmakers.
Months of delays, spent mostly without a parliament, meant little legislative work could be done.
Ahead of the snap election on Sunday, the government said that more than 200 million euros ($235 million) will be lost forever due to a failure to ratify international agreements.
Once the top beneficiary of the EU Growth Plan in the Balkans, Europe’s youngest country now trails most of its neighbors, the NGO Group for Legal and Political Studies’ executive director Njomza Arifi told AFP.
“While some of the countries in the region have already received the second tranches, Kosovo still remains at ground zero.”
Although there have been some enthusiastic signs of easing a half of EU sanctions by January, Kurti’s continued push against Serbian institutions and influence in the country’s north continues to draw criticism from both Washington and Brussels.
- ‘On the edge’ -
Across the river from the Lumbardhi, the funding cuts have also been felt at Dokufest, a documentary and short film festival that draws people to the region.
“The festival has had to make staff cuts. Unfortunately, there is a risk of further cuts if things don’t change,” Dokufest artistic director Veton Nurkollari said.
“Fortunately, we don’t depend on just one source because we could end up in a situation where, when the tap is turned off, everything is turned off.”
He said that many in the cultural sector were desperate for the upcoming government to get the sanctions lifted by ratification of the agreements that would allow EU funds to flow again.
“Kosovo is the only one left on the edge and without these funds.”
