Unhinged man terrorized block moments before cops gunned him down
A Brooklyn man was caught on camera terrorizing passers-by with a silver object that 911 callers believed was a gun moments before he was shot and killed by cops, the NYPD said Thursday.
A 50-second video posted on the department’s Twitter page includes three clips in which Saheed Vassell, 34, is seen pointing the cylindrical object at people as he walks along the sidewalk.
In the first snippet, Vassell extends both arms and lunges at someone pushing a shopping cart, sticking the metal tube in the person’s face.
The second clip shows Vassell veering across the sidewalk to point the pipe at a person who’s walking hand-in-hand with a child.
In the third, Vassell walks up to a man standing by the curb, puts his left hand on the back of the man’s neck and sticks the object in his chest.
A fourth clip shows Vassell approach a corner and strike a combat stance as he points the pipe with both hands toward the intersection.
“At this point, responding officers discharged their weapons,” reads narration printed on the screen.
According to the NYPD, four cops fired a total of 10 rounds at Vassell at the corner of Utica Avenue and Montgomery Street in Crown Heights shortly after three 911 callers reported a man with a gun in the area at 4:40 p.m. Wednesday.
The city Medical Examiner’s Office said on Thursday that Vassell was hit by seven to nine bullets, with the gunfire inflicting fatal wounds to his brain, aorta and spinal cord.
The video clips were recorded by private surveillance cameras and edited to pan and zoom in on the pipe protruding from Vassell’s fist. The NYPD declined to release the raw footage.
Cops haven’t figured out exactly what Vassell was holding, but a high-ranking police source said it appeared to be a car part.
The NYPD video is interspersed with written excerpts of the 911 calls.
“There is a guy in a brown jacket walking around pointing — I don’t know, (to someone else) what is he pointing in people’s face? They say it’s a gun, it’s silver,” reads one passage quoting a caller.
A quote attributed to an another 911 caller reads: “There’s a guy walking around the street, he looks like he’s crazy but he’s pointing something at people that looks like a gun and he’s like popping it as if like if he’s pulling the trigger.”
A worker at the Yahya Hardware Store, where a surveillance camera recorded a man recoiling as Vassell pointed the pipe toward his face, said Vassell often wandered the aisles of his store.
The worker, who gave his name as Marwan, said Vassell was “all the time drunk, crazy” and “would jump to your face sometime.”
“If you don’t know him,” Marwan recalled, “he was scary.”
“He’d say, ‘I am Saheed. I will kill everybody.’ ”
Vassell’s father, Eric Vassell, 63, accused cops of shooting his son without warning.
“They came to kills this kid,” he told The Post.
“The police didn’t even talk to him . . . That’s all basic training. Why didn’t they do that for my son? Why didn’t they say, ‘Hey, Mister, put your hands up’?” he said with tears in his eyes.
The NYPD declined to say whether the cops issued any commands before opening fire.
None of the cops who responded to the 911 calls — including one who didn’t open fire — were wearing body cameras, which also record audio.
The NYPD has been outfitting cops with body cameras since a federal judge ordered a trial of the technology in 2013. The department plans to have all patrol officers wearing them by the end of the year.
Vassell lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his parents, brother and sister. The apartment building’s superintendent said Vassell hoarded scraps of metal and other junk on the roof.
“I saw him carrying in items at all hours of the day . . . He saw these things on the street and would pick them up,” said Blanca Martinez, 44.
State Attorney General Eric Scheiderman launched an investigation into the incident. An executive order issued by Gov. Cuomo in 2015 appoints the AG as a special prosecutor in the police killings of unarmed civilians.
Mayor de Blasio pledged the city’s full cooperation with the probe, calling Vassell’s death “a tragedy by any measure.”
“Look, I understand why this is so painful to people,” he said.
“That is an exceedingly, difficult tense split-second decision that has to be made,” he added.
Additional reporting by Caroline Spivack and Larry Celona