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Police Fatally Shoot Knife-Wielding Man in New York City

Crime scene investigators arriving at a Lower East Side building where two officers responding to a domestic dispute shot a knife-wielding man inside an apartment.Credit...Angus Mordant for The New York Times

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The response to a domestic dispute at a Lower East Side apartment took a fatal turn early Friday when police officers shot and killed a knife-wielding man as he stabbed his partner, the police said.

The 32-year-old man was being led out of the apartment by officers when he broke away, grabbed a large butcher knife and began attacking his domestic partner, said Chief Terence A. Monahan in an early morning news conference. That man sustained multiple stab wounds, but is expected to survive.

The police officers who fired shots and the two people involved in the dispute were not immediately identified.

The incident highlights one of the more fraught duties of New York City’s police officers: responding to the city’s staggering number of domestic violence calls. In December 2018 alone, the Police Department fielded some 16,400 domestic incident runs. Despite concerted efforts from city agencies to combat it, domestic murders and domestic violence remain stubborn problems across the five boroughs.

The police said the couple had a history of domestic disputes, and the man who was fatally shot had been arrested on assault charges in December.

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Chief Terence A. Monahan, right, said a 32-year-old man was shot by officers when he grabbed a large butcher knife and began attacking his domestic partner.Credit...Angus Mordant for The New York Times

The man’s partner, who called 911 early Friday morning, had received an order of protection on February 5 against him, the police said. It was not immediately clear whether the two had continued to live together or to see each other after that.

Officers received a call for a domestic dispute from 227 Cherry Street, a large apartment building, just before 7 a.m. The person who had called 911 met officers at the door and said the man was barricaded in the back of the apartment, Chief Monahan said.

Two officers found the man, who was calm, hiding inside a closet, Chief Monahan said. They persuaded him to come out and were leading him out of the apartment when he broke away from them, the chief said. The man then grabbed a large butcher knife from the apartment’s kitchen and began stabbing his domestic partner, he said.

The two officers, who were wearing body cameras, drew their weapons and fired five shots, hitting the knife-wielding man in the torso, but not before he wounded his partner.

Mr. Monahan said body camera footage showed officers immediately performing C.P.R., but the man was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital not long after.

Paul Savino, who worked at a nearby construction site, saw the man being taken out of the building. “The guy was on the gurney,” he said. “They were giving him C.P.R. He looked really bad.”

The complex in which the two men lived is part of a subsidized housing unit connected to One Manhattan Square, a luxury apartment building, which is still under construction.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Manhattan Man Caught Stabbing His Partner Is Fatally Shot by Police. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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