By Will David, The Journal News (Westchester, N.Y.)
Mount Vernon, N.Y. police said a 25-year-old domestic-violence suspect who lunged at a police officer with two knives was shot dead by two other officers early yesterday.
Roger Hibbert of 130 Sickles Ave., New Rochelle, was taken to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx with two bullet wounds in the torso and died there at 2:22 a.m. yesterday.
The three officers, whose names were not released by Police Chief Terrance Raynor, were being treated for trauma yesterday. The department’s Internal Affairs unit was looking into the shooting, the chief said.
“Apparently, the shooting was justified,” Raynor said.
The incident began at 11:50 p.m. Thursday, when police were sent to 137 S. 13th Ave. on a report of domestic violence from a 27-year-old woman who was described by police as Hibbert’s former girlfriend.
She told police that Hibbert had come to her apartment twice. He did not get in the first time but came back, got in, roughed her up, broke furniture and left. While the officers were at the second-floor apartment, Hibbert telephoned, Raynor said, and told the officers that he was nearby, armed, and on his way to the house.
“Naturally, the officers, out of concern for her safety, remained at the scene,” Raynor said.
Police said Hibbert drove up in a red car, parked it down the block and walked toward the house, his left hand wrapped in a shirt and his right hand concealed behind his back. Hibbert tried to open the door with a key but couldn’t and started to walk away as the officers approached him, Raynor said.
“The cops said, ‘Let us see your hands,’ ” the chief said.
Neighbor Kamara Riddenhour, 23, said, “The police were telling everyone to go back into the house and don’t open the door. The guy started running and they started chasing him. They said he was armed with a gun when they started chasing him.”
Hibbert ran a half-block to West Second Street, then turned and faced the pursuing officers and brandished two large knives, like meat cleavers, Raynor said.
“He lunged at one officer. The officer retreated,” Raynor said. “At that point two police officers discharged their weapons.”
The two officers - one a detective and the other a uniformed officer - fired three shots, striking Hibbert twice. Police administered first aid and called an ambulance, Raynor said.
“I woke up thinking I was hearing firecrackers because we are near the Fourth of July,” said Maria Felix, who owns the Good Neighborhood Association day-care center at 208 W. Second St., in front of which the shooting occurred.
Hibbert was arrested in November 2002 in New Rochelle on charges of second-degree criminal contempt, disorderly conduct and fourth-degree tampering with a witness. He was sentenced to a conditional discharge on March 15, 2003, police said. Two days before the sentencing, his girlfriend had filed a domestic-violence charge against him in Mount Vernon. Police there obtained a warrant and arrested him on March 24, 2003. Efforts to learn the disposition of that case were unsuccessful yesterday.
Beryl Butt, Hibbert’s landlord in New Rochelle, said he had been living there with another woman until recently. Hibbert had been renting a room from Butt for three years and worked for a local warehouse store, Butt said, adding that the last time she saw him was on Wednesday, when he and the woman who had been living with him arrived there in a taxi.
She knew nothing of the Mount Vernon woman, she said.
“If they were having any problems, it was hush-hush,” Butt said. “He was a nice fellow. Roger was very soft-spoken. I was astonished to hear about his death.”
Mayor Ernest Davis said, “Unfortunately, we have a young man dead, and we wish it could have been prevented.”
The incident was the first fatal police shooting in Mount Vernon since Detective Anthony Rozzi shot and killed Dr. Lenas Kakkouras on Feb. 26, 1993. Rozzi was cleared of manslaughter charges, but he, the Police Department and the city were found responsible for Kakkouras’ death in a multimillion-dollar civil suit.