NYPD Slays Knife-Wielding Madman As Times Square Tourists Flee

Yesterday the NYPD pepper-sprayed then shot and killed a man who had threatened them with a massive knife after they accosted him for smoking marijuana. Via the New York Daily News:

A deranged knife-wielding man was gunned down by police near Times Square Saturday after a bizarre backward chase in broad daylight that sent terrified tourists scrambling for safety. The madman was fatally shot at 3 p.m. on a Seventh Ave. sidewalk after ignoring orders to drop his 11-inch butcher knife — and then menacingly lunged at cops, police said. The 51-year-old suspect, identified as Darrius Kennedy, was walking backward for seven blocks with cops in pursuit, appeared impervious to police pepper spray and refused to surrender his blade, witnesses said. “He looked like he was crazy,” said Jalloh Osman, 26, who joined a crowd of onlookers watching the strange showdown at the corner of W. 37th St. “They sprayed him, and he kept going backwards. “They kept telling him, ‘Put it down! Put it down!’ But he refused.”

As terrified tourists fled into souvenir stores and theater lobbies, some locals chased the scene across Times Square with their cell phone cameras rolling. The man was pronounced dead on arrival at Bellevue with five bullet wounds. As you can hear on the clip below, some bystanders immediately called the shooting "unjustified." Twitter has exploded with both vigorious defenses of the NYPD and claims of unnecessary deadly force and racism.