By Bill Swayze and Margaret Mchugh, The Newark, N.J. Star-Ledger
With his father screaming “Don’t shoot him!” a 34-year-mentally ill man was shot and killed early yesterday by a Mount Olive police officer after the man lunged at him with a knife.
The shooting occurred moments after 72-year-old Sumandor Alli had called 911, just as he had done before whenever his son, Gregory, stopped taking his medication and acted out.
This time, however, Gregory, a schizophrenic, had turned violent, stabbing his father with a blunt knife.
When Mount Olive patrolman Joseph Abrusci arrived at the front door of the Budd Lake home about 1:30 a.m., Gregory Alli charged him, waving a serrated knife and ignoring the 22-year veteran officer’s repeated demands to drop it, authorities said.
Abrusci fired three shots from his department-issued .40-caliber Smith & Wesson, each one striking Alli in the chest, authorities said. Alli was taken to Hackettstown Community Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 2:32 a.m.
Joseph Devine, chief of investigations in the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office, said Abrusci’s use of deadly force appears to have been justified, but that the office is investigating.
“The officer performed as he is trained to do. He took action to control the situation and to protect himself,” Devine said.
Still, Sumandor Alli wonders why Abrusci had to kill his son.
“They knew he was mentally off. I was hollering, ‘Don’t shoot him! Don’t shoot him!’ There was no reason to shoot him three times. They could have shot him once in the leg,” Alli said in a telephone interview from his room at Hackettstown Community Hospital.
Police Chief Edward Katona would not say whether his officers knew Gregory Alli was mentally ill, but said the man “has been known to have problems” and that police had been called to the Pine Street house before because of his erratic behavior.
The shooting marked the first time in at least 25 years that a Mount Olive police officer has used deadly force, Katona said. The chief said Abrusci has been in life-threatening situations before in which deadly force would have been justified, but managed to defuse the situation without it.
As for Abrusci shooting Alli in the chest, Katona said, “officers are trained to shoot center of mass” because they are more likely to miss if they aim for smaller targets.
Abrusci, 40, was upset about the shooting and remained under observation at an area hospital, Katona said.
“He was trying to help the father, to help the family, and he became the target,” the chief said.
While not familiar with this shooting, Phillip Lubitz of the New Jersey chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, said that in general, “the interaction between police and the mentally ill often is not a good one. Police have a difficult job to do, and it’s all too common that they are not given enough training to identify people with a mental illness or deal with them effectively.”
Lubitz said it is best for police to bring along a mental health professional, but Katona said that is not possible when police are responding to a crisis.
“We don’t have mental health professionals sitting in the patrol cars,” the chief said.
Sumandor Alli, a retired security guard, said his son was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 18. He couldn’t hold a job and spent most of his time in bed. But when he was taking his medication, he seemed happier and would cut the lawn and handle other household chores, his father said.
Gregory Alli had lived most of his life in his father’s home. His mother, Antoinette, died of cancer in January 2003.
Sumandor Alli said his son attacked him after he asked him whether he was taking his medication. Gregory Alli punched and kicked his father, then stabbed him in the chest with a dull knife that didn’t break the skin, Sumandor Alli said.
“Afterward, he apologized to me and left the house, went out for a while,” the father said.
When his son returned, Sumandor Alli told him he had called police to take him to Saint Clare’s Hospital for treatment. Police had taken him there a month ago, the father said. Sumandor Alli said he told his son to go change his clothes, and then summoned him when police arrived.
Sumandor Alli said his son charged past him with a serrated knife. He “lunged” and “jabbed” at the officer, who hurried backward, telling the man to back off. His son didn’t stop. “He was trying to stab one of them,” the father said.
Asked if Gregory Alli might have been trying to commit “suicide by police,” Morris County Prosecutor Michael Rubbinaccio said, “It’s too early to determine that.”
Rubbinaccio said he will wait until the investigation is completed before deciding whether to present the matter to a grand jury. If he decides against doing so, the state Attorney General’s Office would review the findings, Rubbinaccio said.
The attorney general’s guideline on shootings by police says that in incidents involving municipal officers, cases must be presented to a grand jury except when the facts are undisputed that the use of force was justifiable.
The situation has played out elsewhere in New Jersey.
In December 1999, South Brunswick police Sgt. Raymond Hayducka shot and killed Kyung Ho La after the 30-year-old man lunged at him with a 12-inch sword blade inside the La family’s house. Five officers arrived with two mental health clinicians to examine La for possible commitment to a psychiatric facility. But he ran inside his parents’ home and grabbed the sword, authorities said.
A Middlesex County grand jury cleared Hayducka of wrongdoing and found that he acted properly. But an undisclosed number of grand jurors also said police could have considered taking other steps to avoid the confrontation and subsequent shooting. The parents filed a federal lawsuit accusing police of violating their son’s civil rights and conspiring to cover up the events leading to his death.