A week after news broke about the Yellow Dogs shooting in East Williamsburg, we’re sorry to have to report another death in the neighborhood: Yesterday afternoon around 3pm on the 900 block of Hart Street at Irving, police responding to a 911 call shot and killed a 22-year-old who had reportedly threatened his landlord.
The man has been identified as Rexford Dashrath, who was described to Bushwick Daily by his neighbor Iris Gonzales as “a quiet kid” who was never in trouble; The New York Daily News reports that Dashrath was learning-disabled.
There were few witnesses to the event, but NYPD Deputy Commissioner John McCarthy tells the press that Dashrath, who weighed around 300 pounds, had approached the arriving patrol car with a knife before flinging a glass bottle at a taxi; when the officers got out of their car and ordered Dashrath to drop the knife, he lunged at one of them, who shot him five times in the torso at close range.
Dashrath was taken to Woodhull Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly before 4pm. The New York Times reports that the shooting remains under police investigation, but there has been no change in duty status for the officers involved. The name of the officer who shot Dashrath has not been provided.