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<\/p>\nNEW YORK (WABC) — An apparently emotionally disturbed man was fatally shot by police on the Brooklyn Bridge early Friday morning.<\/p>\n
Police officers responded to reports of a man climbing the bridge around 3:28 a.m.<\/p>\n
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Upon arrival, officers from the 84th Precinct Emergency Services Unit saw a man walking on the bridge cables.<\/p>\n
Members of ESU climbed onto the cables and attempted to talk to the man for almost an hour.<\/p>\n
The ESU members had to physically clip themselves to the bridge for their safety and Commanding Officer of ESU, Gerry Dowling, said that “drastically impacts the speed of their movement.”<\/p>\n
Dowling said that the officers could see the man holding a knife.<\/p>\n
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Dowling said the man said to the officers, “I want to die. I want you to kill me. I have a bomb. You are not going to make me do something bad to the cops.”<\/p>\n
“They issued multiple verbal commands for the man to drop the knife,” Dowling said.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the man began to quickly descend on the cable, the same one that officers were clipped to.<\/p>\n
“The officers began to move backwards, away from the male, but they were not able to move as quickly as the subject who was approaching them,” Dowling said. “When the male got within approximately three feet from the closest member of ESU, he raised his arm with the knife extended outward toward the officer. At that point, a member of ESU who was on the roadbed of the bridge discharged his weapon one time, striking the male.”<\/p>\n
The officers provided livesaving-measures to the man, but he was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital.<\/p>\n
A knife and flashlight were recovered at the scene. The man’s identity has not yet been released.<\/p>\n
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