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Police fatally shoot man threatening to 'hurt himself' in Northeast Albuquerque
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Officers shot and killed a man threatening suicide Friday morning at an apartment complex in Northeast Albuquerque.
Albuquerque Police Deputy Chief Cecily Barker said at least one officer fired at the man, killing him. She said a gun was found near the man’s body.
Barker said police didn’t know if the man shot his gun during the encounter.
The incident was the second fatal police shooting in less than a week. On Sunday, Albuquerque Police Department officers fatally shot a man outside his home during a struggle over a gun.
Around 8:15 a.m. Friday, a person called 911 to report that their coworker told her “he wanted to hurt himself,” Barker said. The Albuquerque Community Safety department responded to the man’s apartment at Villa La Charles, a complex at 12200 Montgomery NE, just west of Tramway.
ACS was created by the city as a way to reroute calls from police and to send unarmed personnel trained in crisis prevention and de-escalation to behavioral health-related calls.
The man would not answer the door or respond to ACS responders when they arrived, Barker said. Officers then responded, and the man answered the door.
“We know that officers identified themselves as the Albuquerque Police Department,” she said.
Police ordered the man to drop a gun, Barker said, before at least one officer fired at the man. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
“There is a gun next to him,” she said in an early afternoon briefing to the media.
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APD has not found any previous behavioral health-related responses tied to the man, Barker said. APD responded, she said, after ACS couldn’t make contact because officers “were checking on the welfare of the individual whose employer called and was concerned about him.”
