Bangladeshi teen in 'mental crisis' shot dead by New York police

New York, March 29 (IANS) A Bangladeshi teenager undergoing a “mental crisis” has been shot dead by city police after he lunged at them with a pair of scissors and his mother intervened in their attempts to subdue him, according to police.

The incident started with a phone call to an emergency police line that Win Rozario, 19, had himself made on Wednesday afternoon, New York Police Patrol Chief John Chell said at a news conference.

City police were already on edge after a gunman killed one of them on Monday.

Chell said that when police arrived at the teen’s home, Rozario was in a “mental crisis” and the situation was “quite hectic, chaotic and dangerous.”

When he charged at them with scissors, police fired a Taser to subdue him but his “mother, being a mother, came to the aid of her son to help him” and knocked out the Taser dart, Chell said.

(Taser is an electric device that shoots darts that attach to the target and gives electric shocks to subdue the person.)

Rozario then picked up the scissors and came after police who “had no choice but to defend themselves" firing their weapons, Chell said.

Rozario’s brother, Ushto, 17, however, disputed the police version asserting that his mother had been holding him the whole time,

“One of the cops pulled out a gun and shot him as my mother [was] still hugging him,” The New York Times quoted him as saying.

Chell, however, said that the police wore bodycams that recorded the incident and the video would back their version.

In Monday’s incident, a police officer, who is likely of Indian heritage, shot dead the gunman who killed his colleague while investigating an illegally parked car.

The officer who responded to the shooting, Vekash Khedna, is listed on the police database as an Asian and he is on the police cricket team in the New York-based Commonwealth Cricket League.

Another Indian-origin police officer was in the news last month when he was attacked by a gang of illegal immigrants in Times Square.

There was outrage when some of the assailants were let off by the public prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, without seeking bail allowing them to flee the city.

A Republican member of Congress from the city, Nicole Malliotakis, invited him to the Capitol as her special guest during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address to draw attention to the law and order, and illegal immigration problems.