New York City police shot and killed a man who refused to drop a screwdriver he was using to threaten his mother in Queens, officials said.
The New York Police Department received a 911 call from a screaming woman early yesterday and two officers responded, said Chief of Patrol Terence Monahan.
The officers found a 28-year-old man holding his mother in a small stairwell and threatening her with a screwdriver. The frantic woman screamed: "He's going to kill me! He's going to kill me!" Monahan was quoted as saying by New York Post.
The officers ordered the man, identified by police sources as 28-year-old Jahlire Nicholson, to drop the screwdriver, but he refused.
The officers then tried to disarm Nicholson and during the scuffle, shot at him with a Taser, missed, but managed to free the woman, identified as Jarzette Jacobs, 55.
But Nicholson still would not heed commands to drop the screwdriver, and approached the officers with the tool in his hand, Monahan said.
"It's a dangerous weapon. A screwdriver you can be stabbed with, the same way you can be stabbed with a knife," the officer said.
With that in mind the officers each squeezed off one shot, hitting Nicholson in the shoulder and leg. He died of his injuries at a hospital, officials said.
The two officers, who were not immediately named, were treated for ringing in their ears, police said.
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