Dramatic 911 audio captures the last moments of a 20-year-old gunman’s life as he pleaded for help, saying he was “crazy” before three police officers shot him dead as he fired at them on the Upper East Side, the NYPD says.
“I have a gun in the store,” Elijah Brown is heard telling a 911 dispatcher the night of Nov. 13 as he held a Madison Ave. deli clerk at gunpoint after forcing him to call for help, then grabbed the phone away from him. “I’m in trouble,” Brown said. “I’m trying to get away.”
As the worker ran off, Brown implored him to no avail to stay, promising he wouldn’t shoot him, then turned his attention back to the dispatcher, telling her he was heading to Mount Sinai Hospital as he described his plight. “Please please can you help me please…”
“I’m crazy,” he said. “I have a gun. Someone was trying to kill me and I got away because I’m crazy.”
When Brown ended the call, police said, he left the deli, near E. 107th St., headed to the nearby hospital, first hiding his silver handgun outside in a flowerbed, then scuffling inside the hospital with an NYPD lieutenant working a second job there as a security guard.
The lieutenant forced Brown to leave, police said. Then Brown retrieved his gun and pointed it at the lieutenant and several passersby, prompting a 911 call that sent three three uniformed cops rushing to the scene.
The officers’ body-worn camera footage — posted Thursday on the NYPD’s YouTube page, along with other camera footage and the 911 audio — shows Sgt. Daniel Cody and officers Grady O’Halleran and Irene Prentzas — jumping out of their patrol car on Madison Ave. near E. 96th St. and chasing Brown, yelling, “Drop it!”
Brown instead turned and fired his weapon at least once, which was captured on closed-circuit TV footage, and the officers opened fire, police said.
Cody fired 10 times, O’Halleran nine times and Prentzas twice, police said.
Brown immediately crumpled to the ground. He was rushed to Mt. Sinai but could not be saved.
Police said that before the deli confrontation, Brown pulled a gun on a man in an apartment building elevator one block south.
“God saved me, because this guy was abnormal,” said that man, a cab driver who asked to be identified by his first name only, Mohammed. “(I’m thinking) anytime he’s gonna shoot — he’s gonna shoot me anytime. Just luck.”
Brown’s family lived in that building, a cousin said, and he had likely been there to visit relatives.
“My cousin wasn’t just another young kid or troublemaker,” the cousin, 25, told the Daily News a day after the shooting. “He was going through something. Everybody goes through things. The family is still trying to figure everything out right now, and we’re just trying to stay strong.”
The NYPD’s Force Investigation Division is still reviewing the shooting and will determine if the officers followed proper procedure in firing their guns.
