An unarmed 18-year-old man was shot and killed by a police officer Thursday in the Bronx as the teen allegedly was trying to flush drugs down a toilet, the fourth time police have shot and killed a suspect in as many weeks.
Narcotics officers had arrested two other men whom they watched allegedly sell drugs just before 3 p.m.
when they approached the teenager, Ramarley Graham.
Mr.
Graham ran into his nearby home at 749 E.
229th St., a law-enforcement official said.
Mr.
Graham rushed into a second-floor bathroom, where he was possibly trying to flush drugs, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.
Mr.
Graham spun around when an officer confronted him, and the officer shot him once in his chest after what Mr.
Browne said was a struggle.
It wasn't clear what caused the officer to fire.
A law-enforcement official said Mr.
Graham had eight prior arrests, including burglary, robbery, dealing marijuana and other offenses.
The disposition of those cases wasn't known.
Police didn't release the name of the officer involved.
Constance Malcolm, 39, who said she was Mr.
Graham's mother, stood crying outside the crime-scene tape that police had used to rope off the block where her son died.
She said she was working as a nurse's aide at Cedar Manor Nursing & Rehabilitation Home when she heard from a neighbor that her son had been killed inside the family's apartment.
She said her 6-year-old son and her mother were also home at the time.
"The cops told me they were chasing him.
He had weed, and that's it," Ms.
Malcolm said.
"Nobody deserves to be shot like that in their own house."
Mr.
Graham was taken to Montefiore Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
The shooting marks the third fatal confrontation involving New York City police in the past week and the fourth deadly shooting by cops so far this year.
In 2011, city police shot and killed nine people, including one off-duty officer who fatally shot a robbery suspect on Long Island.
Still, a cluster of police-involved shootings doesn't always lead to an elevated total by year-end.
In 2010, there were three such fatal shootings in a 25-day period, yet the year-end total was eight, said Mr.
Browne, the NYPD spokesman.
In the earliest incident this year, on Jan.
12, an armed man was shot and killed by an officer who mistook him for one of two gunmen reported to be in the man's East New York neighborhood that night.
The man, 26-year-old Duane Browne, emerged from his home holding a .38-caliber revolver as police arrived at a chaotic scene, but authorities believe Mr.
Browne was trying to protect his brother from the armed robbers.
A man believed to have been on a carjacking spree was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer on Jan.
26 after driving a stolen vehicle into a pole in Brooklyn's Cypress Hills section.
The man, 22-year-old Christopher Kissane, emerged from the crashed vehicle wearing a mask and holding a gun, and an off-duty lieutenant shot him after Mr.
Kissane fired his weapon, according to Mr.
Browne.
In a third fatal shooting on Monday, an off-duty officer killed 17-year-old Antawon White after he and another teenager tried to rob the officer on a Bushwick street.
Mr.
White struck the officer with a wooden cane before he was shot and killed, Mr.
Browne said.
Two police officers have been shot in the past two months, one fatally.
Officer Peter Figoski, a 22-year veteran, was providing backup at the scene of a Brooklyn home-invasion robbery on Dec.
12 when he was shot and killed.
Lamont Pride, 27, the accused gunman, has been charged with murder along with four other men.
Officer Kevin Brennan was shot in the head, and survived, after a fight with a man suspected of shooting at a rival in Brooklyn's Bushwick Houses on Tuesday.
He is expected to recover - 4 February 2012.
