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NYPD Probes Two Fatal Shootings Hours Apart: Park Slope Hospital Standoff and West Village Replica Gun

Union leaders are using the incidents to press hospitals for stronger security measures.

Overview

  • Police identified the Brooklyn hospital patient as 62-year-old Michael Lynch, a former NYPD officer who barricaded himself with a patient and a security guard while wielding a shard from a broken toilet.
  • Officers at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital issued repeated commands and deployed Tasers that proved ineffective before fatally shooting Lynch; the other two people in the room were unharmed.
  • In the West Village, officers approached a BMW after a reported road‑rage crash when a 37-year-old exited and pointed what appeared to be a handgun, prompting police to fire; the weapon was later identified as a realistic Sig Sauer air pistol.
  • The West Village driver was taken to Bellevue Hospital and pronounced dead, and officials said body-worn camera footage captured the encounter in which officers repeatedly ordered him to drop the weapon.
  • Both shootings are under review by the NYPD Force Investigation Division, hospitals resumed normal operations, and the New York State Nurses Association is pressing for panic alarms, screening, and rapid-response behavioral teams during contract negotiations.