NEW YORK CITY ARCHIVES Another Knife-Wielding Foe Taken Down by NYPD in Queens
by John Surico
As if the Times Square encounter with that nutjob and his knife in broad daylight wasn’t already imprinted in our short-term memory.
In Queens, police received a tip at around 5pm that a 27-year-old man was holding a knife to his own neck. Once they arrived on the scene, the tip came true as the NYPD surrounded the man. After numerous calls for the man to put the knife down, he began to walk towards the cop with the knife waving high in the air.
One of the NYPD officers shot the approaching target in the shoulder, a presumably non-life-threatening shot. However, when the 27-year-old was taken to nearby Jamaica Hospital, he was pronounced dead at around 7:30pm.
Unfortunately, it turns out that yesterday was an overall bloody day for the NYPD: this fatal incident rides off the coat tail of another shooting in which the police were responsible.
In the Bronx, NYPD arrived at a suspected bodega robbery-in-process. Reynaldo Cuevas, one of the young employees there, was able to escape the bad guys inside. But, once he ran from the scene, a police officer “accidentally discharged” at Cuevas, leaving the teenager dead when he arrived at a nearby hospital. Commissioner Ray Kelly confirmed the shooting as “accidental” on the part of the police officer.
So one knife-wielding man killed in Queens and one innocent teenage boy shot in the Bronx. And all in a day’s work.