A Search for Answers After the Police Fatally Shoot a 79-Year-Old Man
The New York Times
The police said Emil Williams, who had been reported missing, pointed a gun at an officer before they shot him. A neighbor on Long Island said everything about him had been “normal.”
Emil Williams spent his days caring for patients at a nonprofit in the Bronx. He was a kind neighbor and friendly face on his street in Great Neck, on Long Island. Next month, he would have celebrated his 80th birthday.
But he had been reported missing in Nassau County on Tuesday, and that evening the police fatally shot him after he walked up to a Queens station house and pointed a gun at an officer outside, the authorities said.
Mr. Williams’s identity, which the New York Police Department has not released, was confirmed by two law enforcement officers and an internal police report obtained by The New York Times.
The confrontation at the station was over in a matter of seconds, according to the police, but the broader circumstances leading up to Mr. Williams’s death, and his state of mind before the encounter, remained murky on Thursday.
Mr. Williams was shot multiple times just before 7 p.m. on Tuesday outside the 111th Precinct station house in the Bayside neighborhood of Queens, Philip Rivera, the department’s chief of patrol, said during a news conference on Tuesday night.
Mr. Williams had gotten out of a nearby car and walked over to the station, where he suddenly pulled out a gun and aimed it an officer who was providing security outside, Chief Rivera said.
