i know, i know. he was mentally deranged, he had a hairbrush and they thought it was a gun. i mean, even his
momma thought he had a gun. but what about the cop who kept shooting when the victim was down? what about witnesses who said the victim had already dropped the hairbrush by the time the bullets started flying? why did five cops have to shoot him at once? what about the cop who shot at him more than anyone else did -- even when another cop told him to stop, told him the guy was down, why did this particular cop continue to shoot?
why did it take 18 shots to "disarm" this guy? why do they always have to shoot to kill? couldn't they have shot him in the foot or the arm or something, like they used to on
the rockford files or whatever? they didn't kill the guy every time they shot at him on
hawaii five-0, so why is that the policy now? (i know, i know -- that's television. but
still.) why doesn't this "
the cops shot him 41 times" or "
tomorrow would have been his wedding day" stuff ever happen to white people?
when are cops going to stop
getting away with shooting black men?
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Man, 18, Is Fatally Shot by Police in BrooklynA young man was fatally shot last night in a hail of 20 bullets fired by five police officers who responded to his mother’s 911 call for help in a domestic dispute in Brooklyn, the authorities said.
The police said they believed that the man, Khiel Coppin, 18, had a gun. But when the gunfire stopped, it turned out that he had been holding a hairbrush.
Officers went into the building at 590 Gates Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, about 7 p.m. The police said they were responding to a 911 call from the mother reporting domestic abuse and asking for help to “deal with this,” and that on the call a man was overheard threatening to kill her and claiming “I have a gun.”
One resident of the building, Andre Sanchez, 17, said that after the police arrived, he saw from the hallway through the open door of the apartment that the officers inside were talking to Mr. Coppin, who was in a bedroom and opening and closing that door as they spoke.
Mr. Coppin then climbed out a first-floor window and confronted more officers outside the building, and multiple shots were fired at him, bystanders said. Wounded, Mr. Coppin fell to the ground and was handcuffed, witnesses said. He was taken to Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center, where he was pronounced dead, the police said.
It was unclear how many of the 20 shots hit Mr. Coppin, a law enforcement source said.
Mr. Coppin’s mother, whose name was not released, was among the people outside the building during the shooting. Earlier in the day, she had called a hospital psychiatric unit asking for urgent help in dealing with her son, the law enforcement official said. Psychiatric workers came, but Mr. Coppin was gone. After waiting two hours, the workers left, and later, Mr. Coppin returned.
Two bystanders who said they saw the shooting said that Mr. Coppin was not armed, but was carrying a hairbrush when he climbed out the window and that he dropped it when the firing began. The two witnesses also said they both heard one officer yelling for the shooting to stop.
According to the police, another witness described Mr. Coppin as concealing the hairbrush under his shirt, pointing it outward.
A restless crowd quickly gathered and grew to as many as 150, as some neighbors shouted protests against police brutality. “You need training — this is absurd!” one woman shouted out a window to the police. Another man pressed against a yellow crime-scene tape and said: “I’m not trying to start a riot. I’m just saying it’s not right.”
The site and surrounding blocks were cordoned off as dozens of police officers, detectives and community affairs officers arrived to investigate the shooting and control the crowd. Community leaders at the scene included City Councilman Albert Vann.
Witnesses and the police offered different details about how the shooting occurred.
Mr. Sanchez said that just before the shooting, he went outside and saw several officers there with guns drawn. Mr. Coppin approached the window, backed away, then returned and stood on the sill, Mr. Sanchez said. When an officer told him to get down, he jumped to the ground and started to go through a gate in the fence in front of the building, Mr. Sanchez said.
An officer told Mr. Coppin to put up his hands, and when he did he dropped the hairbrush and the shooting began, although one officer called out to stop the gunfire, Mr. Sanchez said.
Officers started chasing Mr. Sanchez and knocked him to the ground after, he said, he protested: “Why you got to shoot him like that, for nothing?”
A similar description of the shooting was given by Precious Blood, 16, who said she heard about 10 shots fired, most if not all by one officer. Another officer called out: “Stop, stop, stop shooting — he’s down,” she said, but the shooter kept firing, “like he was playing with a toy.”
The law enforcement official gave a different version of the encounter, saying that Mr. Coppin charged toward the officers and refused repeated orders to stop. The police said they were also exploring the possibility that Mr. Coppin was trying to prompt a shooting, a phenomenon known as “suicide by cop.”
Mr. Coppin’s mother was at the 79th Precinct station house last night and gave a statement to the police, they said.
The five officers who fired all passed Breathalyzer tests, the law enforcement officials said.
Al Baker and Annie Correal contributed reporting.
