NEW YORK – A knife-armed man was killed by the NYPD in the first hours of Friday on the Brooklyn Bridge, after climbing the bridge cables and threatening the agents intervened to try to rescue him.
According to the reconstruction provided by the NYPD, the police had received a 911 call around 3:30 in the morning for the presence of a man on the bridge supports, apparently intent on launching into the void. The Emergency Service Unit, the specialized New York police team, also called to operate in high-altitude rescues and crisis situations.
The agents secured the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge with harnesses and tried for about an hour to establish a dialogue with the man, inviting him down and deliver the knife. According to Gerard Dowling, commander of the Emergency Service Unit, during the negotiations, the man would have told the agents that he wanted to be killed and would have also claimed to have a bomb with him.
The situation fell when the man began to quickly descend along one of the cables in the direction of the agents. The men of NYPD, linked to the bridge structures for security reasons, had limited chances of retreating.
When he found himself less than a meter away from one of the agents, according to the police reconstruction, the man would lift his arm by pointing the knife in his direction. At that point, an agent who was on the track exploded a single blow, storing it. The rescuers reported him on the bridge floor and immediately started the assistance maneuvers, before the transfer to the hospital, where the man was declared dead.
The whole sequence would have been recorded by the bodycam of the agents. On the spot the police recovered a knife and a flashlight. The authorities have not yet confirmed the presence of the device that man had spoken about: this element is also part of the ongoing investigation. The identity of man has not been made public.
New York mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed that the intervention had begun as a rescue attempt against a person who seemed willing to jump from the bridge. The mayor emphasized that the agents had initially tried to de-escalate the situation and convince the man to put himself in safety.
The episode also caused heavy consequences on Friday morning viability, with the temporary closure of part of the Brooklyn Bridge and repercussions on traffic between Brooklyn and Manhattan.
It is the second serious episode within a few days in one of the most popular and symbolic places in New York. On Monday, in Times Square, a woman armed with two knives stabbed two people, killing a 32-year-old woman before she was mortally hit by the police after attempts to stop her with a Taser had not been successful.
The Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883 and one of the most recognizable images in New York, connects Manhattan and Brooklyn through the East River.
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