A vagrant, who police say attacked an officer with a box cutter, was shot by the officer yesterday afternoon.
The incident occurred across the street from the straw market on Bay Street in full view of tourists and local residents.
The Nassau Guardian reports that when their reporters arrived, just after 4:00pm, the man “was sitting on the sidewalk leaning against a wall at Bahama Subs at George Street.”
An ambulance arrived, but for some unexplained reason, the newspaper says, it took over 15 minutes to load the man onto the ambulance. By that time, he was barely breathing. He died shortly after.
The man, who appeared to be in his 40s or 50s, had been sitting for so long, waiting to be put into the ambulance, that the sidewalk was covered in blood.
A large crowd of business people, government workers, tourists and residents gathered.
Police report that around 3:55pm a female officer in the area of the Bonneville Bones store noticed a man acting suspiciously.
“She became suspicious of the individual and asked him his reason for being in the area,” Assistant Commissioner of Police Glenn Miller told reporters.
Apparently, the female officer asked the man to leave and an argument ensued between the female officer and the man.
Miller said a male officer riding a bicycle noticed the scene and intervened.
An altercation then resulted between the man and the male officer. Miller said the man allegedly produced a box cutter and attempted to cut the officer.
The officer then pulled out his service revolver and shot the man in the upper thigh, police said.
There is some concern, as the man was allegedly shot after being kicked to the ground, which would seem to be another case of excessive force on the part of a Bahamian police officer.
Tourists, especially were horrified with one saying that they came to the Bahamas to relax and that this was not what they expected.
“Someone told me this was a lot safer than going to, like, Jamaica, but I don’t know I guess,” a teenage visitor was overheard saying.
This is the second time in less than a week that police have been involved in shootings in New Providence.
