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Officers Shoot Brooklyn Man After He Attacks Them With Police Baton: NYPD

By  Paul DeBenedetto and Murray Weiss | November 20, 2016 10:54am | Updated on November 21, 2016 10:49am

BROOKLYN — NYPD officers fatally shot a Brownsville man who was beating them with a baton he wrestled away from one of them Saturday morning, officials said.

Two officers from the NYPD's Housing Bureau were patrolling the Van Dyke Houses about 1:10 p.m. Saturday afternoon when they got a report of an emotionally disturbed person in the ninth-floor hallway and approached Erickson Brito, 21, there, police said.

They asked for his ID but then a fight then broke out, and Brito grabbed one of the officer's metal batons and began to swing it, opening a two-inch gash in the head of the male officer and striking the female officer several times in the head, according to Chief James Secreto of the Housing Bureau.

"Both officers at this point fired at the suspect," Secreto said. "He was struck several times, and subsequently pronounced dead at the scene."

The officers fired a total of seven shots between them, hitting Brito three times, sources said.

The two officers were taken to Jamaica Hospital, where they were treated for head injuries. They'd both been released as of Monday morning, an NYPD spokesman said.

Brito, who lived in the neighborhood, had been arrested 11 times before for charges including assault, trespassing, robbery, burglary and drug use, sources said.

He was arrested most recently in March for criminal trespassing, an NYPD spokesman said.

It wasn't immediately clear what Brito was doing in the building.