A Muslim man who attacked an off-duty police man with a meat cleaver in the middle of the Manhattan rush hour has been shot 18 times by officers.
Akram Joudeh, 32, from the Queens district of New York City, was being operated on in hospital after his 5pm attack – sparked by a confrontation with traffic police.
Joudeh, who has a long criminal history, was initially stopped by police near Penn Station, in the middle of Manhattan, as he tried to remove a wheel clamp from his illegally-parked car.
Jimmy O’Neill, the new NYPD police chief – who only takes over officially on Friday from the retiring Bill Bratton – said that Joudeh then ran through the streets around Macy’s department store in the middle of rush hour.
Joudeh pulled out an 11-inch cleaver from his waistband and began running toward Sixth Avenue, officials said.
Officers joined in the pursuit, and one uniformed sergeant deployed a stun gun to no effect.
A bystander, Jonathan Schneier, said when he left work to get coffee he saw a balding man holding a meat cleaver, surrounded by a small group of officers yelling at him to drop the knife. One officer had a Taser out. Others had handguns.
Call me crazy but when you pull out a meat cleaver and attack a police officer you should get what is coming to you.
On a side note I bet the media will portray the perpetrator as having mental issues and totally ignore the fact that he was yet another Muslim committing a hate crime.