New Orleans Police shoot, kill man

New Orleans Police Shoot, Kill Man
New Orleans Police Shoot and Kill Man Who Allegedly Threatened an Officer With a Knife
By BRETT MARTEL
The 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.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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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?"

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