N.Y. / REGION

Police Shoot Hammer-Wielding Man Sought in 4 Manhattan Attacks

By J. DAVID GOODMAN and AL BAKERMAY 13, 2015

For two days, beat officers across New York City were on the lookout for a man believed to be the person who had swung a hammer, apparently at random, at the heads of park-goers and others around Manhattan.

Every officer at every roll call had seen a photo of the wanted man, a 30-year-old drifter with a history of arrests and severe mental illness. They hoped to catch him before another attack.

On Wednesday, two officers spotted the man in Midtown. He could be the hammer attacker, but they wanted to speak with him to be sure. The man, identified by the police as David Baril, saw them, too.

He stopped at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 37th Street, and as the officers closed in, he pulled a hammer, red with the dried blood of previous attacks, police officials said. He began swinging wildly at one of the officers, Lauren O’Rourke, 27, striking her as she backpedaled, the police said.

As they spilled into the intersection and a beam of late-morning sunlight, her partner, Officer Geraldo Casaigne, drew his gun and fired four times, hitting Mr. Baril in the right arm, the torso and the “head area,” officials said.

“Fortunately, thank God, both officers are fine and this individual is not going to be roaming the streets of New York attacking innocents any longer,” Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said.

At a time of intense national scrutiny of police shootings, the gunfire in a crowded, gritty stretch of Midtown just after the morning rush on Wednesday provided a stark illustration of the dangers that officers can face and the split-second decisions they must make.

In fatal shootings by the police in Ferguson, Mo., and North Charleston, S.C., the encounters unfolded in relatively isolated locations and many details of the shootings took days to emerge.

By contrast, when Officer Casaigne opened fire on Mr. Baril, he did so in one of the nation’s most heavily policed urban corridors, in the plain view of Police Department cameras and amid scores of civilian onlookers. Images from those cameras were released roughly five hours after the shooting, at an afternoon news conference.

The video showed that as the officers went to speak with Mr. Baril, he pulled a hammer, lunged after Officer O’Rourke and began wildly swinging at her head. Deputy Chief William Aubry, the commander of Manhattan detectives, said she was struck three times as she backed away into the middle of the street. The entire encounter lasted roughly three seconds.

Mr. Bratton praised the officers for being alert, spotting the man and following him. While an internal inquiry into the shooting would go forward, he said, it appeared Officer Casaigne, 36, made “what I believe was the right decision” in opening fire.

Even before a series of seemingly random hammer attacks on Monday set off the manhunt that ended in the violence on Wednesday, Mr. Baril was wanted by the authorities..

He had skipped a court appearance in the Bronx related to charges that he had assaulted a worker inside a Kennedy Fried Chicken restaurant on March 21, striking her in the back after demanding “my $10” in change, according to court papers. A warrant was issued on April 22 for his arrest.

Mr. Baril has paranoia and schizophrenia and has taken medication, said Chief Aubry, and his social media accounts contained images of a hammer with blood dripping from the head and claws.

In 2013, the police said, Mr. Baril tried to assault a police officer in Riverside Park who was writing him a ticket. His other previous arrests included for possession of a box cutter in 2003 and, on another occasion, of a stun gun, the police said.

But little of his life was immediately known. He had family connections to the Bronx, but Mr. Baril’s most recent address was a 40-bed shelter for mentally ill people on West 113th Street in Manhattan, officials said; he left there around November or December.

A resident of the shelter who have his name as Karim recognized a photograph of Mr. Baril and said he had stayed there beginning around last summer. “He just talked to himself,” Karim, 44, said. He said Mr. Baril mumbled incoherent things to himself and had difficulty interacting with others.

Mr. Baril had lived on the sixth floor of the shelter, which is run by Weston United, in a room with another man, said Karim, who declined to provide his full name because he was not sure he was allowed to talk to the news media. Mr. Baril wore a lot of red clothes and carried a backpack.

“He comes in and out,” Karim said. “He comes in and out. He never really said nothing.”

Karim nodded toward a chair near the door of the shelter’s television room, remembering Mr. Baril cooking popcorn in the microwave and eating it as he watched television.

Colby Dillon, a lawyer for the Bronx Defenders who has represented Mr. Baril, said the depiction of Mr. Baril was inaccurate. “Far from the monster he is being made out to be,” Mr. Dillon said, “Mr. Baril is a human being who is devoted to his family, working hard to support himself and pursuing his college degree in biology.”

David BarilCreditNew York Police Department

As of late Wednesday, charges had yet to be filed against him in the attacks on Monday or from the violence on Wednesday.

The hammer attacks the police were investigating occurred in a burst of six hours on Monday. The first took place around 1:45 p.m. near 35th Street and Avenue of the Americas, the police said. The assailant struck a man with a hammer as he crossed the street. About an hour and a half later, he struck a woman near Madison Square Park.

Around 7:30 p.m., a 28-year-old woman was sitting on a bench in Union Square Park when a man approached her. The man pulled a hammer from his bag and struck her on the head. She was treated at Lenox Hill Hospital and released.

About 10 minutes later, the man approached a 33-year-old woman walking on West 17th Street. He came up from behind her and struck her on the back of the head.

The victims, though struck in the head, were not seriously injured. But the Police Department commenced a broad manhunt, fearing that the next blow could be fatal.

A woman who lived at Mr. Baril’s last known address in the Bronx, where his mother also resided, said detectives came looking for him on Tuesday. She said the family moved out before October.

Joe Washington, 59, a doorman in Manhattan and a longtime neighbor, said he knew Mr. Baril’s mother when she was pregnant with him. He described the person he believed to be Mr. Baril as someone who grew from a “respectful kid” to a “loner,” displaying unusual behavior.

Another former neighbor in the Bronx, who declined to give her name because of the nature of the situation now surrounding Mr. Baril, said he was a “polite young boy” who began to act strangely as he grew up.

She learned from Mr. Baril’s mother that her son did not always take his medication. “He never spoke to anybody,” the neighbor said. “I didn’t know him to be violent at all, not at all.”

She said that long after he stopped speaking to her, he would still hold the door for her. His mother, she said, was a “very hard-working, lovely woman.” She said she last saw him about two weeks ago, walking down Kappock Street near the former family home.

“I didn’t feel threatened by him,” she said.