Police officers in Brooklyn fatally shot a 20-year-old man following a harrowing foot chase in which the victim opened fire on a pair of thieves who snatched his wallet and ran away, authorities said.
The victim, Nathan Scott, was shot and killed by officers after he opened fire on a man and woman who had just robbed him near East 57th Street and Linden Boulevard in East Flatbush.
The March 19 deadly shooting happened around 6 p.m. when four uniformed officers in an unmarked car responded to reports of gunfire and came upon the unfolding chase, police said.
Unaware of the robbery just moments earlier, police shot Scott several times to stop him from firing his weapon at the fleeing suspects.
Mortally wounded, Scott died at Kings County Hospital later that night.
An innocent bystander was also wounded, later identified as 60-year-old Henry Massop, who was shot in the stomach and arm while he was working at a car repair shop nearby, but it was not clear who shot him.
“My whole body was cramp,” Massop told ABC 7 from his Brooklyn hospital bed, with one bullet still lodged in his arm that will require surgery to remove. The other bullet tore through his abdomen but exited the other side, he said.
“It happened so quick, but the police they did a good job. They pin him, he couldn’t go no where.”
The bandits who set off the tragic chain of events were not injured, and police withheld their identities.
For now, no charges have been filed following Scott’s attempt to handle the situation himself — a decision that cost him his life.
No officers were injured by any gunfire.
Investigators spoke with the male suspect who took Scott’s wallet, and he confessed to taking it, saying the victim chased him and his accomplice for several blocks, firing at them before police intervened.
Investigators recovered a gun from the scene but did not provide details. And the shooting remains under investigation by the Police Department’s Force Investigation Division.
Part of the chase was captured by a porch security camera, which showed two individuals sprinting along a sidewalk as gunshots ring out in the background, presumably from Scott’s weapon as he chased the pair.
A short time later, Scott appears in the video frame, as a gray sedan screeches to a halt, and multiple shots ring out at him. Four officers can be seen exiting the vehicle and firing more than a dozen times in the direction of the shooter before Scott slumps to the pavement.
The officers then order the lifeless man to remain still before backup arrives.
It was not immediately clear how many times Scott was shot.
The officers who opened fire are part of the Brooklyn South community response team and were assisting a unit in the 67th Precinct, according to the department’s chief of patrol John Chell, who held a press conference about the shooting the same night.
There was no early indication that the officers would face charges for shooting Scott, even though the man was pursuing two suspects who had victimized him just moments before.
The incident recalls a similar tragedy that occurred on a street in East Harlem 15 years ago: A white plainclothes officer shot and killed an off-duty Black deputy who had been chasing a suspect he caught breaking into his car.
Months after the May 2009 shooting, a grand jury declined to indict Officer Andrew P. Dunton in the killing of Officer Omar J. Edwards, who pointed his weapon at Dunton when he ordered Edwards to drop it.
At the time, the shooting ignited racial tensions and allegations of discrimination in policing, leading to calls for updated procedures that would help prevent such shootings and an examination of how race influences the decisions of officers.
