Report: Police shoot, kill man holding hairbrush
CNN
Mon November 12, 2007
Area: New York
NEW YORK - Police shot and killed an unarmed young man outside his Brooklyn apartment Monday night after his mother reported a "family dispute with a gun," police and witnesses said.
Police told The New York Times they believed that Khiel Coppin, 18, had a gun, but after five officers fired 20 shots they realized he was holding only a hairbrush.
The Associated Press reported that the teen had a history of mental illness and his mother had tried to have him hospitalized earlier in the day.
A bystander who said he saw the shooting told CNN affiliate WABC-TV that the man was unarmed. "He dropped the brush," said the bystander, Dyshawn Gibson. "He put his hands up. Police just started firing."
Police spokesman Paul Browne told AP that -- as the teen approached officers -- police ordered him to stop. The teen refused and continued to approach them, Browne told AP, prompting police to open fire.
An initial police statement given to reporters Monday night said the man was seen earlier pacing around the apartment.
"He began screaming from the window at his mother and the police," the police statement said. "At some point, the male climbed out of the window and began crossing the sidewalk toward the police."
That's when police began firing, a police spokesman said.
The police spokesman said officers were called to the apartment building in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood at about 7 p.m. by Coppin's mother who said she was having a dispute with her son.
According to a statement, police said Coppin's mother reported that her son was armed. But The New York Times quoted police who said Coppin himself was overheard on the mother's 911 call threatening to kill her and claiming "I have a gun."
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