Skillet-Wielding Man Shot by Police, Mother in Critical Condition

A Bronx man was shot dead by the police on Sunday night after four officers found him hammering his mother with a frying pan in his apartment.

Police marked a frying pan as evidence in an alleged homicide after busting into a Third Avenue apartment building Sunday night. Photo by: New York Police Department

The man, identified as Satnam Singh, 27, lived with his mother, Balbir Kaur, 54, on the second floor of the building at 3055 Third Ave. Just after 11 p.m. on Sunday night, a relative called 911 and asked the police to check on Ms. Kaur. A sergeant and three officers responded to the call, according to police reports, and heard noises coming from apartment 2D, where the victim lived with her son. The officers got the keys to the apartment from the superintendent, who lives across the hall, but couldn’t open the door because the security chain was latched from inside.

The officers forced their way in and saw Singh battering his mother with a frying pan, according to the report. The police said that Singh failed to respond when he was told to drop his weapon. The officers gunned him down when he raised the pan to strike his mother again. According to police sources, the sergeant fired once, and when Singh rose up again, one of the officers fired four times.

Singh died on the scene, according to police reports, and his mother was taken to Lincoln Hospital with multiple fractures of her skull and her left arm and was bleeding in her brain. Hospital sources confirmed that she was in critical condition Monday afternoon.

Neighbors said they noticed Singh had some mental disability and was always in his mother’s company.

“I have never seen him without her,” said Aka Obeng, who lives in an apartment across the hall. Obeng also said that the family was very quiet and both mostly kept to themselves. According to a woman who lives two doors down, mother and son spoke little English.

Tenants started moving in at the building as of May last year. The building, called “the dorado” is a part of New York Housing Development Corp.’s affordable housing projects in the South Bronx.

The New York Police Department said that there is no protocol to help officers determine when they should fire to protect another person’s life. It nonetheless declined to comment on whether there will be an investigation into excessive use of force in this case.