NY attorney general will investigate fatal police shooting at Bronx 7-Eleven
Sept. 12, 2023, 3:28 p.m.
Police say 22-year-old Mamady Cisse was threatening a store employee with a knife when police responded and shot him.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said her office will investigate a Saturday incident in which an officer fatally shot a man who was allegedly robbing a Bronx 7-Eleven and threatening an employee with a knife. The attorney general is required by law to investigate all police killings.
NYPD Assistant Chief of Patrol Borough Bronx Benjamin Gurley said Mamady Cisse, 22, was pacing around the Throgs Neck 7-Eleven at around 2:10 p.m. on Saturday when an employee stepped outside momentarily. The employee returned to find Cisse behind the cashier counter with a knife, standing beside a female employee who looked “very nervous,” Gurley said at a news conference. Cisse was removing merchandise from behind the counter, police said.
The employee ran to the NYPD 45th Precinct around the corner and returned with two officers, authorities said.
“One officer gave several commands to the male inside the location to take his hands out of his sweatshirt pocket,” Gurley said.
Cisse didn’t say anything to the officers, Gurley said, but revealed a knife and “lunged” at one of them. The officer shot Cisse once in the torso, and Cisse was pronounced dead at 3:14 p.m. at Jacobi Hospital.
“Officers recovered knives at the scene,” a statement from the attorney general’s office read.
Cisse lived in the Soundview section of the Bronx, just a few miles from where he was killed. His family could not be reached for this story.
The NYPD’s Force Investigation Division is also investigating. Police have not named either officer at the scene.
When asked by a reporter, Gurley said last week that the officers involved will not be suspended.
Police have body-worn camera footage and surveillance video of the incident, Gurley said. The city’s medical examiner has ruled the death a homicide via "gunshot wound of torso with injury of liver and major blood vessels."
This is the fourth known police killing in New York City in 2023. The attorney general’s office released body-worn camera footage on Friday of a different fatal police shooting that took place on Roosevelt Island last month.
This story has been updated with a ruling from the city's medical examiner.