Mohamed Bah, a 28-year-old Bronx man and former student at Borough of Manhattan Community College, was shot and killed by police in the Bronx. The man attacked two of six emergency service officers with a 13-inch knife. Click below for more of the story.
The knife-wielding man who was killed by police was shot after he attacked two cops with a 13-inch knife, police said Wednesday.
Mohamed Bah — a 28-year-old former student at Borough of Manhattan Community College — attacked two of six emergency service officers after they ordered him to drop the blade inside his Morningside Ave. apartment near W. 124th St. about 6:40 p.m. Tuesday, police said.
The team of cops fired two Taser guns and shot a rubber bullet at Bah as he lunged toward them with the kitchen knife, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
It was not immediately clear if Bah was zapped from the Tasers or hit by the rubber bullet before he landed on two cops, tumbled to the floor, and tried plunging the blade through their bullet-resistant vests, Browne said.
“He’s stabbing me! Shoot him!” one officer yelled, Browne said.Tiles and a rag covered with blood, shot by a building resident are seen in the hallway outside of the apartment where Mohamed Bah, was shot and killed by police.
Three cops, including the two who were stabbed, fired a total of 10 rounds — striking Bah at least nine times, Browne said. Bah was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The officers were taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where one of the officers was treated for a stab wound to his left arm.
On Wednesday, Bah’s mother claimed police did not need to use deadly force.
“My son was a loving, calm boy,” said the mother, Hawa Bah, 56. “He never hurt anyone. He wasn’t even screaming at the cops. He just asked to be left alone.”
The police account differs dramatically from hers.
Browne said the officers were responding to a 911 call from relatives that Bah, who had no criminal record or documented history of mental illness, was acting erratically.
Hawa Bah — who just flew in to the city Monday from Guinea — told police that she was concerned “that her son, who is in this apartment, is going to hurt himself or somebody else,” Browne said.
“My son was sick,” the grieving mother said Wednesday. “I told him I wanted to take him to the hospital.” Two patrol cops soon arrived and knocked on the door of the fifth-floor apartment, Browne said.
“(Bah) opened the door. He was naked. The officer was talking to him to come out,” Browne said.
But Bah, who was standing with his side towards the officers, suddenly turned and showed he was carrying a knife, Browne said.
One officer “grabbed the handle of the door and just pulled the door shut,” said Browne, adding that the cops called the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit to the scene.
Bah’s mother said an army of responding officers pulled her away from the apartment after her son barricaded himself inside.
“They told us to go downstairs,” she said. “I asked the police why they needed all the guns. They said he wasn’t opening the door.”
She said she wanted to try knocking on the door again.
“I said, ‘Let me go up please. He will open the door for me,’” she recalled.
Browne said cops were still not sure if Bah was by himself in the apartment because he wasn’t speaking coherently to cops trying to talk him out.
A team of six ESU cops went to the front door and tried to push a small camera through the door when Bah — now wearing a shirt and shorts, but still holding the knife — opened the door, Browne said.
The officers ordered Bah to drop the blade, but he refused and lunged towards the officers before he was killed.
Browne said investigators were still trying to determine why Bah, a cabbie who worked in about a month, snapped.
Cops found no drugs, including any prescription medicine, inside his home.
