A man wielding a box cutter was shot by NYPD cops and critically wounded Wednesday after a wild “road rage” fight with another man escalated at a Brooklyn intersection, prompting two detectives to intervene, police said
The altercation began on Avenue K near Utica Ave. in Flatlands around 1:50 p.m. when a 33-year-old man threw an object at a passing BMW, causing the driver to stop, get out of the car and confront him, Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said during a news conference later Wednesday afternoon.
As the men struggled, one armed with a box cutter, two passing detectives from the 63rd Precinct’s detectives squad who had just finished lunch spotted the fight and pulled over to intervene.
While trying to separate the men, one of the detectives spotted the weapon and ordered the man to drop it multiple times, Kenny said.
The man ignored the detective and walked away from the officers, around the parked BMW and back toward the driver, but one of the cops got in the middle of them in an attempt to deescalate the confrontation.
But the man walked toward the detective, box cutter in his right hand, forcing the cop to fire off one shot, striking him in the chest.
“This person came within 3 to 4 feet of our detective with a boxcutter out in his hand, refused numerous directives to drop the weapon,” Kenny said. “So the officer felt he was an immediate threat to himself and to the person this subject was originally trying to stab.”
Faylynn Dube, 37, a security guard, called the chaotic violence “like a road rage incident.”
“I was standing right across the street,” he said. “He got out the car and was screaming, ‘What did you do that for?’ He went into the trunk and pulled out a black metal object and he was using it like a weapon. The other guy pulled out a box cutter. They were in each other’s faces. The undercover cop came and intervened. He was trying to stop him from stabbing him up.
“The guy with the box cutter went around the car and came at him,” Dube said. “The cop pulled out a gun and shot him. It was one, clean shot to the chest and he fell to the floor.
“It was shocking. It was like a road rage incident. It didn’t have to rise to the level of gun violence.”
“I thought it was a car crash at first,” said Mone Page, 37, who works at a medical clinic near the corner. “The victim was outside a white BMW on the ground.”
Officers called for backup and began rendering care to the wounded man, according to Kenny.
“He was already handcuffed and then all the police cars started coming,” Page said. “It was madness.”
Medics rushed the man to Kings County Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition. The two detectives were taken to an area hospital to be treated for tinnitus.
The wounded man has had three prior encounters with the NYPD “involving mental illness,” the most recent in 2018, Kenny said.
At the same time as the shooting, an NYPD car crashed about three blocks from the intersection. The officers were racing to the scene when they crashed into another car, according to police sources.