NYPD bodycam and drone footage released Friday shows the fatal shooting of a knife-wielding man after an hour-long standoff atop the Brooklyn Bridge last month.
Chaun Bottom, 41, was spotted walking along the bridge cables around 3:30 a.m. On Sept. 4, prompting a response from the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit. Detective Nicholas Giordani climbed hundreds of feet above the East River to confront him.
“What’s going on, man? What brought you up here,” Giordani asks in the footage.
The detective spent roughly 50 minutes pleading with Bottom, who was hanging off the side of the bridge. “What’s going on in your day that you think this is the only option you have?” Giordani says to him.
“This is the last place I want you to be right now, man. Whatever’s going on in your life, we could talk about it, we could discuss it,” Giordani is heard saying.
At one point, Giordani begs Bottom to move back toward the middle of the bridge rather than remaining suspended over the edge. “Look man, I know you don’t know me, I get that, but I care about you more than you’re gonna know and I plan on spending however much time I can to show you that,” Giordani says.
The detective continued pressing Bottom to reconsider. “There is stuff left, you have your whole life ahead of you,” he pleads. “Don’t say there’s nothing left, yes there is, I promise you there is plenty ahead of you.”
“I don’t want to see you up here, I understand the view is nice but there’s no reason to be up here right now,” Giordani adds.
Toward the end of the encounter, Giordani spots Bottom’s weapon and asks him to drop it if he steps back. Bottom is then seen raising the knife and lunging toward the officer as cops yell at him to “drop the knife.”
Sgt. Dennis Dooley, stationed on the bridge’s roadbed, fired one shot that struck Bottom. Officers then rushed to remove him from the side of the bridge and continued demanding he drop his weapon.
Bottom was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
It was unclear from the footage what Bottom was telling Giordani during the standoff. However, ESU Chief Gerard V. Dowling previously told reporters that Bottom had stated: “He stated, ‘I want to die, I want you to kill me, I have a bomb, you’re going to make me do something bad to the cops.”
The NYPD said its Force Investigation Division will continue to investigate and analyze the fatal shooting.