The 79-year-old man shot and killed by police after the NYPD says he pointed a gun at an officer outside a Queens precinct was a physician assistant at a Bronx nonprofit, the organization confirmed Wednesday.
Emil Williams, of Great Neck, L.I., was identified as the elderly man who showed up at the NYPD’s 111th Precinct stationhouse in Bayside Tuesday brandishing the weapon after being reported missing from his home and in poor mental health, according to police sources.
Williams was working as a physician assistant for VIP Community Services, a nonprofit that offers supportive housing, job training and addiction treatment in the Crotona Park East section of the Bronx.
“VIP Community Services is saddened by the tragic event and extends condolences to the family and all affected,” a spokesperson from the Bronx-based organization wrote to the Daily News.
Neighbors on the tree-lined street in Great Neck where Williams lived in a tidy, two-story home with his wife were stunned by the news.
“They’re like normal people… I was shocked,” said Jose Quispe, 42, who added that he never saw any indication that Williams struggled with mental illness.
“I always used to see him, [he’d] take the garbage out,” said Quispe. “He was nice.”
The Bronx District Attorney’s Office confirmed that Williams had been arrested three times in the 1990s, all for misdemeanor turnstile jumping and drug possession. He pleaded guilty and was released on time served each time. Williams never went to prison.
Williams, behind the wheel of a white Lexus, pulled up outside the stationhouse on the corner of 215th St. and Northern Blvd. around 6:40 p.m., NYPD Chief of Patrol Philip Rivera said at a news conference Tuesday night.
He then confronted a uniformed officer assigned to stationhouse security and “suddenly displayed a firearm and pointed it at the officer,” Rivera said.
The officer repeatedly instructed Williams to drop the gun, and when backup officers arrived and issued the same command, Williams continued to aim the weapon at them, police said.
Four cops fired their weapons, striking Williams numerous times. Police performed CPR on the gunman as medics rushed to the scene. He was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Queens, where he died.
Police are investigating if Williams may have been looking to die at the hands of cops, according to police sources.
Earlier Tuesday, the gunman was reported missing from his home in Nassau County, L.I., with his family noting he was in poor mental health, the sources added.
It was the second shooting in the city involving police on Tuesday.
The first occurred early in the morning inside an apartment at the Lower East Side’s Vladeck Houses when an ex-con on parole shot and wounded an NYPD detective before he was shot by cops during a wild four-hour standoff, officials said.
Detective Terry Avent, a 21-year veteran and member of the NYPD’s elite Emergency Service Unit, was executing a search warrant in the NYCHA development on Madison St. when 35-year-old Edwin Rivera opened fire at the officers, striking the detective in the shoulder.
Officers fired back, striking Rivera multiple times in the side. Both men were taken to Bellevue Hospital, where they are expected to recover.
Police would not say how many bullets officers fired in either incident, or if any of the officers engaged in the shootings had prior incidents in which they fired their guns.
With Rocco Parascandola
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