New York: Police fatally shot a 38-year-old Brooklyn man Friday evening when officers searching for him in connection with a bench warrant found him hiding in the bathtub of an apartment in the Flatbush neighborhood, officials said.
Police said they had to use deadly force on the man, identified as Vilmond Jean Baptiste, after he tried to stab an officer who had used a Taser that was not effective.
No body-camera footage or witness accounts were immediately available to support the police officers' description of the shooting. A police spokesperson said he did not have details about the bench warrant other than that it had been issued in Kings County in 2022.
At a news conference Friday night, Joseph Kenny, chief of detectives, said Jean Baptiste was also a "strong person of interest" in three homicides this summer. It is not clear whether the officers searching for him in connection with the warrant were aware of that before the shooting.
It all unfolded on the same day Thomas Donlon was sworn in as the Police Department's new commissioner. On Thursday, Edward Caban resigned as commissioner at the request of City Hall after his phone was seized in connection with a federal investigation. His resignation was effective at the end of the day Friday.
Around 5:20 p.m., members of a Brooklyn warrant squad went looking for Jean Baptiste at 485 E. 21st St., police said at the news conference. They found him in a first-floor apartment, fully dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and hiding in a bathtub, police said.
Officers were ordering him to get out of the tub and show his hands when they saw that he was armed with a knife, officials said. Police told him to drop it, and a sergeant then used the Taser.
After the first cartridge was not effective, the sergeant was trying to take out another one when Jean Baptiste jumped out of the tub and advanced toward the officers with the knife, said Kaz Daughtry, the deputy commissioner of operations.
At least three officers shot at him, and he fell to the ground, but it was not immediately known how many rounds had been fired, said Jeffrey Maddrey, the chief of department.
Officers handcuffed Jean Baptiste and tried to render lifesaving aid before he was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died, Maddrey said. The Police Department is still investigating the shooting.
Kenny said the killings in which Jean Baptiste had been a "strong person of interest" were the fatal stabbing of a 66-year-old woman last month and the fatal stabbings in July of a 24-year-old man and a 54-year-old woman.
Officials said Jean Baptiste had a "romantic relationship" with at least one of the homicide victims.
Shortly after the shooting, the streets near the building were crowded with police officers and people from the neighborhood, some of whom said they had known Jean Baptiste or had heard gunshots.