Dec. 26, 2005, 8:06PM
New Orleans police shoot and kill man
Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans police shot and killed a man
who they said had threatened an officer with a knife on
St. Charles Ave.
A businessman had called police after a confrontation
with the 38-year-old local man, whose name was not
released because his family had not been notified, said
Officer David Adams, a police spokesman.
He said officers repeatedly asked the man to drop the
knife, which had a 3-inch blade. They then used pepper
spray on him. "Evidently the pepper spray had no
effect," Adams said.
He said the man then walked toward an officer, who
backed out of the way to avoid being stabbed in the
chest.
Adams said he did not know how many officers fired or
how many shots were fired. That is under investigation,
he said. He said officers determined to have been
involved in the shooting will be reassigned pending the
outcome of the investigation.
Adams did not discount witness accounts that a half
dozen or more shots were fired, but defended officers
against suggestions that such a number of shots
constituted excessive force.
"You have officers with their lives in danger — how many
is too many?" Adams said. "You have an officer who had
to back out of the way to keep from being stabbed in the
chest."
Several bystanders expressed anger that police had
killed the man. While Adams spoke to reporters, one
onlooker shouted, "Are your officers not trained to
disarm a man with a knife without using lethal force?"
"We're trained, ma'am," Adams responded.
The incident occurred about eight blocks from Lee
Circle; police cordoned off both directions of traffic
and the wide median.
Phin Percy said he heard a police car, looked down from
his father's second-story apartment, and saw a
half-dozen officers surrounding a man who was backing
up, waving his hands. Percy began recording video.
"The cops kept telling him, 'Lay down. Lay down.' This
went on for about three minutes," Percy said.
While he was running downstairs, he said, he heard
numerous shots. When he ran out the door, many more
officers had arrived and the body was lying against a
car.
When he reviewed his videotape, Percy said, he saw a
small knife in the man's hand.
A bartender and patron at a nearby bar said they saw the
knife before police arrived.
Patron Trey Brokaw said that when he saw the man shortly
before the shooting, he looked menacing with the knife
in his hand but wasn't in an attacking stance or
targeting anyone.
"I didn't see anyone near him," Brokaw said. "It didn't
seem like anyone was going to get hurt to me."
Brokaw did not see what happened in the final moments
before the shots rang out, however.
"He should have dropped the knife," bartender Chrissy
Gross said. "He obviously was not going to comply."
The shooting was the first involving on-duty New Orleans
police since Hurricane Katrina damaged large areas of
the city and displaced tens of thousands of residents
nearly four months ago, Adams said.
Updated Dec. 28, 2005 –
The officers who shot and killed a 38-year-old,
knife-wielding Black man Monday were justified, New
Orleans’ top cop told CNN Wednesday. Police
Superintendent Warren Riley said that officers tried
talking to Anthony Hayes, but when it appeared he was
going to strike, he was shot dead.
Part of the confrontation
leading to the deadly shooting was caught on videotape.
It shows about 16 officers surrounding Hayes as he waved
a 3-inch blade at officers. Riley told CNN that a
perimeter was formed around Hayes so he couldn't run
into any other businesses or take any citizens hostage.
Hayes reportedly entered
a Walgreen’s pharmacy and assaulted the manager,
breaking his glasses before leaving the store along St.
Charles Avenue near downtown, CNN reported. After Hayes
left the store, police followed him down the
street.Officers ordered Hayes to lie on the ground, and
when he refused they sprayed him with pepper spray.
"The officers in fact
gave many verbal commands ordering him to place the
knife down," Riley said in the interview."They used
mace. The mace had no effect on him."The shooting has
sparked an outcry from critics who say officers could
have fired non-fatal shots at the suspect or even used
Tasers, which fire darts that administer high-voltage
shocks to stun assailants.The situation was unfortunate,
Riley said, but officers would have betrayed their
training if they had aimed to fire a non-lethal
shot."This is what we we're trained to do," he said.
The officers are trained
to treat knife attacks as deadly force and are not
schooled in disarming suspects with knives using
hand-to-hand combat, Riley told The Associated Press
Tuesday. Witnesses told CNN that Hayes frequently
wandered the neighborhood talking to himself and that he
had never bothered anyone before.Robert Jenkins, an
attorney, who witnessed the shooting, told CNN, "It
happened very fast. Personally, I wish they would have
shot him in the leg, but something like that happens so
fast, it's hard to tell."An internal review will
officially determine whether proper procedures were
followed, Riley said, but he added that "all witness
accounts" indicate the shooting was justified. The
officers who fired at the man have been reassigned
pending an investigation, AP reported. Was the shooting
justified? Should officers have used a less-lethal means
of
subduing the man?
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