The NYPD has unveiled body-camera footage capturing a fatal incident in Brooklyn where a lieutenant discharged his firearm, fatally wounding a man who allegedly threatened him with a gun. According to police accounts, the man ignored multiple commands to relinquish his weapon.
On October 5, at approximately 9:06 a.m., Lt. Richard Custodio and five fellow officers responded to a 911 call regarding an alleged breach of a protective order and harassment at a residential location on E. 86th St., near Avenue B in East Flatbush. The caller provided the police with the suspect’s identity, physical characteristics, and clothing details, identifying him as 28-year-old Royston Bacchus.
Upon arrival, the officers observed Bacchus exiting the building with his hands in his hoodie’s pockets. He walked past them, turned left, and continued along the sidewalk.
Realizing Bacchus matched the suspect’s description, the officers pursued him for about a block and a half, from E. 86th St. to Coventry Road.
The footage reveals Bacchus standing in the street facing the officers as Custodio repeatedly commands him to “drop it” about ten times. Other officers join in, shouting, “Drop the gun!” and “Don’t be stupid! Drop the gun!” in an urgent attempt to de-escalate the situation.
As Custodio advances, Bacchus begins retreating toward the curb, gripping a gun in his left hand. He then raises the weapon slightly and aims it at Custodio, prompting the lieutenant to shoot once. Bacchus, hit in the chest, collapses onto the curb, crying out in pain.
As Custodio gets closer to him, Bacchus starts to back up toward the curb, all the while clutching a gun in his left hand. He then raises the gun slightly and points it in Custodio’s direction, at which the lieutenant fires a single shot. Struck in the chest, Bacchus immediately falls onto the curb, shrieking in pain.
“He had a firearm in his hand,” NYPD Assistant Chief Francis Giordano, the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn South, told reporters at the scene after the incident. “He was ordered numerous times, multiple times to drop that weapon. After repeated warnings were given to drop his weapon, the subject did not comply with those orders.”
Bacchus was wailing near the sidewalk as officers rushed to his aid. Officers cuffed him and performed CPR on him before rushing him to Kings County Hospital, where he died.
“I do not understand why it happened this way. To my son, you will not be forgotten,” Bacchus’ father, Royston Bacchus Sr., said at a vigil for him, according to News 12 Brooklyn.
Cops recovered a loaded firearm at the scene, Giordano said. The NYPD released a photo of the recovered firearm later in the day.
A witness, who asked to be identified only as Ria, told the Daily News she heard an officer yell, “Drop the weapon!” a single time “and then we heard a bang … like, immediately after.”
“And then I came outside … and the body was just lying on the ground,” she said. “It was a while before an ambulance came.”
She said a group of officers performed CPR, then moved the gunman into a police van.
