Bed-Stuy Mourns 78-Year-Old Killed In Fatal Encounter With Cops

BED STUY, NY — A Bed-Stuy block found itself in mourning Friday morning after a 78-year-old neighbor was shot dead in his home by police.

Prayer candles appeared Friday on the front stoop outside 330 Lewis Ave. and neighbors passing by stopped and asked themselves why the elderly man had to die.

"[They] shouldn't have shot," said Mabel Robinson, a neighbor who said she had seen the man around but didn't know him well. "Don't shoot people just because you can."

Police said Thursday the two officers who knocked on the 78-year-old's door — investigating a robbery that appears to have been reported by the man's nephew — had little choice.

"He clearly charged at officers with his gun," Chief of Detectives Jeffrey Maddrey said. "We don't know why."

Robinson has lived on the block for about 47 years and, like other residents, she believes the police responded badly.

"Let's have some mercy on the people," Robinson said.

The investigation shut down Lewis Avenue after gunshots rang out and the elderly man's unmoving body was loaded into an ambulance.

Robinson said she has never seen her street flooded with police.

Tiffany Ferguson, who has lived on the block for 36 years, wondered why police did not use non-lethal tactics.

This type of incident is a complete shock in the neighborhood, but local cops responding with "negligence" is nothing new, Ferguson said.

On Friday, a deli below the man's home stood closed in the morning and early afternoon, one day after one of its workers told Patch his customers heard a half-dozen shots.

A person claiming to be the man's upstairs neighbor posted photos to Reddit that seem to show a bullet hole in a wall inside the apartment building, and what looks like the man's gun on the floor.

The Reddit poster said the man had been robbed before — something another local mentioned at the scene Thursday.

A neighbor told New York Daily News the man used a cane to get around, but still got his own groceries and did his laundry.

"I know one thing for certain," Norma Martinez told the Daily News. "That old man did not deserve to die."