Apr 8, 2009 4:07 pm US/Eastern
Knife-Wielding Woman Fatally Shot By NYPD
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ―
A woman wielding a 12-inch kitchen knife was shot to death by police inside her apartment Wednesday after she slashed an officer's hands.
Police were called by the woman's landlord, who said she was wildly banging on the door of his second-floor apartment. By the time they arrived, she had gone back to her basement apartment and had turned on all the burners on her stove.
The fire department responded to reports of a strong odor of gas, and broke open the woman's apartment door for ventilation. It wasn't clear why the gas was on, officials said.
When the gas cleared, the three officers went in and the woman lunged, slashing one officer three times. The other officers fired a total of five shots, but it's not clear how many hit the woman, said Paul Browne, the New York Police Department's deputy commissioner for public information.
The 48-year-old woman died at the scene and her identity was being held pending family notification. The officer was taken to a hospital and was stable.
The landlord and tenant had an ongoing dispute at the building in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn that the landlord had taken to housing court in March, according to court records. It's possible she hadn't been paying her rent, police said.
There had also been at least six calls related to the dispute since March 31, some to the city's non-emergency hotline and some to 911, but when police responded the problem had been resolved.
(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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