The NYPD has released body-cam footage of a fatal police-involved shooting in which a lieutenant fired one shot at a man who, police say, brandished a gun at him on a Brooklyn street after refusing repeated orders to drop his weapon.
On Oct 5. around 9:06 a.m., Lt. Richard Custodio, along with five other police officers, responded to a 911 call of a violation of an order of protection and harassment at a residential building at E. 86th St. near Avenue B in East Flatbush. The caller gave police the identity, physical description and clothing description of the suspect, Royston Bacchus, 28.
As officers arrived at the scene, Bacchus, with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, walked out of the building right past them, hung a left and walked off down the sidewalk.
Officers quickly realized Bacchus matched the description of the person they were seeking and sprinted after him about a block and a half down E. 86th St. to Coventry Road.
As the video shows, as Bacchus stands in the middle of the street facing the cops, Custodio yells at him to “drop it” 10 times. Several other officers also all simultaneously shout at him, “Drop the gun!,” “Drop the f—ing gun!” and “Don’t be stupid! Drop the gun!”
As Custodio gets closer to him, Bacchus starts to back up toward the curb, all the while clutching a gun in his left hand. He then raises the gun slightly and points it in Custodio’s direction, at which the lieutenant fires a single shot. Struck in the chest, Bacchus immediately falls onto the curb, shrieking in pain.
Police say this revolver was recovered at the scene after Royston Bacchus refused orders to drop it before he was fatally by an officer. (NYPD)
“He had a firearm in his hand,” NYPD Assistant Chief Francis Giordano, the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn South, told reporters at the scene after the incident. “He was ordered numerous times, multiple times to drop that weapon. After repeated warnings were given to drop his weapon, the subject did not comply with those orders.”
Bacchus was wailing near the sidewalk as officers rushed to his aid. Officers cuffed him and performed CPR on him before rushing him to Kings County Hospital, where he died.
“I do not understand why it happened this way. To my son, you will not be forgotten,” Bacchus’ father, Royston Bacchus Sr., said at a vigil for him, according to News 12 Brooklyn.
Cops recovered a loaded firearm at the scene, Giordano said. The NYPD released a photo of the recovered firearm later in the day.
As seen in a police lieutenant’s body-cam video, multiple cops shouted at Royston Bacchus to drop the gun he was holding in his hand until he was fatally shot. (NYPD)
A witness, who asked to be identified only as Ria, told the Daily News she heard an officer yell, “Drop the weapon!” a single time “and then we heard a bang … like, immediately after.”
“And then I came outside … and the body was just lying on the ground,” she said. “It was a while before an ambulance came.”
She said a group of officers performed CPR, then moved the gunman into a police van.