The Associated Press
NEW YORK- A 62-year-old man was shot and killed in a confrontation with police on Saturday night, just hours after thousands of protesters marched down Fifth Avenue Saturday to protest the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man on his wedding day.
It was the third fatal officer-involved shooting of a civilian in three weeks.
Neighbors identified Anatoly Dimitriev as the man who died in Saturday’s shooting. They said he appeared to be mentally ill. Police would not confirm his name. But neighbors said they saw Dimitriev throwing bottles out his apartment window and chopping at trees with an ax in the courtyard of the co-op apartment building where he lived with his 41-year-old son in the city’s Bronx borough.
After receiving several emergency calls about an elderly man with a hatchet, police responded at about 5:40 p.m. Saturday to Dimitriev’s apartment building.
By the time they arrived, Dimitriev had barricaded himself in his apartment, holding his son hostage. Police burst through the apartment door, and Dimitriev fled through a window onto the fire escape, leaving his unharmed son behind.
Police followed Dimitriev, demanding he lay down the ax. When he began to come at police with the weapon, an officer shot him. Two bullets struck the 62-year-old in the abdomen.
Dimitriev was taken to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Worried that Person’s death may ignite tensions still smoldering over the shooting of an unarmed black man in Queens, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion issued a plea for calm.
“I ask the community to remain calm, and withhold judgment until an investigation is completed,” Carrion said in a statement. “Police officers have a job to do, often times under difficult circumstances.”