Deadly police-involved shooting in Brooklyn

NEW YORK (AP) - (WABC) -- A detective shot and killed a check-fraud suspect who threatened officers with a knife during a prearranged meeting in his home Saturday, police said.

Darryl Battle, 20, had agreed to meet with police Saturday morning in his family's brownstone in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, police and the family said. He was suspected of cashing a bad check for roughly $1,000 in Manhattan on July 19, police said.

Battle's sister and another relative were home, but asleep upstairs when Battle and the detectives met shortly before 9 a.m., cousin Nathan Archer said. His cousin said Battle would never have threatened police once he invited them into his home.

"There's no way in the world that he would have been looking to harm or evade the police," Archer, 43, said by telephone from the family's home. "He would have complied with anything they said."

Police said Battle pulled an 11-inch-long kitchen knife from his waistband and came at one of the officers after they told him to go to the precinct with them. The detective, a trained hostage negotiator, tried to persuade Battle to drop the knife, but he backed the detective into a corner with the blade, police said.

The detective fired a single shot, which hit Battle in the torso, police said. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Battle had a 6-month-old daughter and until recently worked in a clothing store, relatives said. His late mother bought the brownstone in 1999, Archer said.

Police released a photograph of the knife Battle was accused of wielding. The detective who shot him is a 20-year New York Police Department veteran who had never been involved in a police shooting, the department said. His name was not released.

The Rev. Al Sharpton spoke by telephone with the family and was looking into the incident, a spokeswoman for the civil rights activist said.

City Councilman Charles Barron, a frequent NYPD critic, met with Battle's relatives Saturday and said he would press for a "thorough investigation" of the shooting, emphasizing that Battle had let police in.

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