Outrage in Crown Heights After Police Kill Mentally Ill Man

Hundreds of mourners in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, voiced outrage Thursday following the fatal police shooting of a mentally ill man.

Protesters filled the intersection of Utica Avenue and Montgomery Street demanding justice for Saheed Vassell, 34, who many recalled as a kind and helpful neighbor who struggled with mental illness, but wasn't violent.

"They murdered my son and I want justice for him," the man's mother Lorna, shouted before the throng. "Saheed came from a good family and they have no right to shoot him down."

On Wednesday, police received frantic 911 calls that described a man pointing what they thought was a gun at passersby on the street just before 5 p.m., according to NYPD officials. Police say officers rushed to the scene and opened fire when Vassell pointed the object towards them. They later determined the object was not a gun but rather a metal pipe with a knob on the end.

Police released several edited video clips and selected transcripts from 911 callers they said led up to the shooting. They didn't release the audio of the phone calls or footage of the shooting itself.

At a press conference earlier in the day, Mayor de Blasio called the shooting a tragedy but said he sympathized with the complicated situation the officers confronted when called to the scene.

"We've gotta recognize, if they believe they were dealing with an immediate matter of life or death to the people in the surrounding area, that's an exceedingly difficult, tense, split-second decision that has to be made."

Thursday evening, protesters marched several blocks from the scene of the shooting, chanting "Shut it down" and "F--k the police."

Doris Marrero said she'd known Vassell for more than a decade.

"Did he kill anyone? No! Did he shoot anyone? No! So why did they do that?" she wondered. Marrero's said her own brother also has mental health issues and often uses a TV remote control as if it were a gun in front of their home.

"There has to be a change. There has to be a different way to handle this instead of killing them."