Police shoot dead man suspected of stabbing a woman at a party

A 46-year-old man died Friday evening after Queens police officers shot him four times and used a Taser because they said he was wielding a knife following an argument at a social gathering, authorities said.

Around 6:50 p.m., police responded to reports of an attack on the second floor of an apartment building in the Forest Hills section of Queens. When officers exited a flight of stairs into the second-floor hallway, police said, they found a man, who allegedly stabbed a woman, with a knife in his hand. Officers yelled at the man to drop the knife, but he attacked them, Jeffrey Maddrey, department chief, said at a news conference Friday evening.

A sergeant fired his Taser while two other officers fired their weapons, police said. The man later died at a nearby hospital, police said.

Body camera footage has not been released, but Chief Maddrey said the officers were wearing cameras that recorded the incident and that he saw it. He added that security cameras in the building captured the man leaving an apartment with a knife and that a woman left the same apartment holding her stomach, which was bleeding. She was later taken to the hospital with at least two stab wounds, police said.

It is not clear when officers viewed the security footage and police have not said how the man and woman might be linked. The woman’s age and condition were not immediately known.

The first assault stemmed from an argument at a party where several children were present, police said.