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.
The officer told Mr. Williams to put the gun down and called for backup. As more officers arrived, Mr. Williams kept the gun pointed at the officer, Chief Rivera said.
In seconds, four officers fired their guns at Mr. Williams, striking him several times. He was transported to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The officers involved in the encounter were also taken to a nearby hospital for evaluation.
“Our officers are confronted with extremely dangerous and unpredictable situations,” Chief Rivera said during the news conference. “They attempted to de-escalate this situation multiple times.”
Mr. Williams’s home in Great Neck, a town on Long Island’s North Shore, was just a few miles from the Queens station house. He worked as physician assistant at Vocational Instruction Project Community Services, a nonprofit providing health care, addiction support and housing to people in the Bronx.
Inez Sieben, the organization’s chief strategy officer, described Mr. Williams as a “stellar staff member” who had taken great care with patients, many of whom came from underserved communities.
“I think that says a lot about his commitment and his caring for people,” Ms. Sieben said on Wednesday, adding: “We’re all just very saddened by the turn of events, and definitely extend our condolences to his family.”
Before Mr. Williams turned up at the police station on Tuesday, he had been reported missing in Nassau County, a region that includes Great Neck, according to the law enforcement officers and the internal police report. The missing person alert for him indicated that he had suffered from “poor mental health,” according to the internal report, but it was not immediately clear if Mr. Williams was suffering from mental distress at the time of the shooting.
At the news conference on Tuesday, Chief Rivera said the police were investigating whether Mr. Williams had intended to kill himself by forcing officers to use deadly force, a phenomenon known as “suicide by cop.”
The encounter was the second police shooting in New York City in 12 hours.
The police returned fire Tuesday morning after a man shot at them while they were executing a search warrant for a gun at the Vladeck Houses on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, officials said. A detective was shot in the left shoulder, and the man was struck in his left side. They were transported to Bellevue Hospital, and both are expected to survive, officials said.
In Great Neck on Wednesday night, Mr. Williams’s gabled two-story house appeared empty and the wooded street was dark except for house lights.
Two women who pulled a car into the home’s driveway around 8 p.m. declined to comment as they went inside.
One house over, Jose Quispe, 47, said he was “in shock” at the news of Mr. Williams’s death. Mr. Quispe, who works in construction, said that when he moved to the block 18 years ago, Mr. Williams and his wife were already living in the house next door. The neighbors saw one another regularly when hauling trash bins to the curb or heading to work, Mr. Quispe said. He described Mr. Williams as “a good neighbor” and said everything about him had been “normal.”
“He was a nice man,” Mr. Quispe said as he stood in his doorway on the darkened street. “He said ‘Hello, how are you?,’ asked me about my family.”
Just down the hill, where some of Mr. Quispe’s relatives live, his 15-year-old niece spoke fondly of Mr. Williams and his wife.
“They’re a really nice family,” she said.
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