The Associated Press
NEW YORK- A man wanted in a Rhode Island killing crashed his SUV at a Manhattan intersection, injuring several pedestrians, and then was shot by police officers after he emerged waving a knife at them, authorities and witnesses said.
A Metropolitan Transportation Authority police officer shot Joel Noonan in the abdomen and groin, authorities said. Noonan, 36, is wanted in Rhode Island in the Sunday stabbing death of his cousin’s husband, police said.
Noonan and the six other injured people were hospitalized after the incident; one woman was in stable condition, but the conditions of the others weren’t disclosed.
Noonan was driving in midtown Manhattan shortly after 9 a.m. when he collided with another SUV, police said, sending it onto a sidewalk and into a group of pedestrians.
He jumped out of his vehicle wielding a knife, authorities said. Police said they fired at him and used pepper spray to subdue him.
“He had a knife in his left hand and he’s swinging it at the cops, chasing them around his Jeep,” recalled bystander Raymond Garcia, who said he saw the police pepper-spray and shoot Noonan.
East Providence, R.I., police told The Providence (R.I.) Journal that Noonan stabbed 37-year-old Steven Dowaglia to death during an argument Sunday evening at a home there. He then attacked his cousin and her 8-year-old daughter, police said.
East Providence police Capt. James Barlow said Noonan is skilled in martial arts and had said he would not be captured alive.
MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said Monday afternoon that Noonan hadn’t been charged with any crime in New York.
Police didn’t say where Noonan, of Avon, Mass., was hospitalized. There was no telephone listing for a Joel Noonan in Massachusetts.