BROOKLYN, N.Y. (PIX11) — He had been wanted for the point-blank fatal shooting of his two neighbors, but now, Jason Pass is dead himself.
Pass was killed by police, who said he left them no choice, after lunging at them with a knife.
Pass, 47, was killed after a standoff on Beach 44 Street, a residential street here, that began at 7:10 a.m. on Wednesday, according to John Chell, the NYPD chief of patrol.
“Our officers were forced to defend themselves,” Chief Chell said at a news conference on Wednesday morning. “To stop the threat, and discharged their firearms, striking the subject four times, three times in the chest, one time in the right leg.”
Chell stated patrol officers encountered Pass after a license plate reader in a vehicle identified his car, a black Honda SUV, Pass was inside.
Officers then approached the vehicle, and Pass got out, Chief Chell said.
“For approximately 15 minutes they had a dialogue, trying to do everything they could to get the male to drop the knife,” Chell continued. “At the end of this, the male, for some unknown reason, in a full sprint, charged the officers.”
At the scene of Wednesday’s shooting, evidence markers showed where bullet casings had landed. Detectives were reviewing information, crime scene technicians were gathering evidence, and uniformed officers were inside row after row of crime scene tape.
Every detail had to be documented not only because it was a police-involved shooting, but also because of the ongoing investigation into the double-fatal shooting of which Pass was accused.
Investigators said that he had gotten into a dispute with his upstairs neighbors, Bladimy Mathurin, 47, and Mathurin’s stepson Chin Wai Mode, 27, last Sunday, over noise.
The three men encountered one another in a hallway outside of Mathurin’s East Flatbush apartment, in an incident that was captured on surveillance video. It shows Mathurin producing a pair of scissors as he and Pass argue.
Mathurin is seen walking away, and seconds later, Pass, according to police, opens fire on Mathurin and Mathurin’s stepson, killing the two men.
Three days later, on Wednesday, officers tracked Pass down, and the standoff and shooting involving him took place, in Bath Beach.
“This never happens here,” said Ernie Radasso, who was awakened by the gunshots as he slept at his mother-in-law’s home, in the block where Wednesday’s shooting took place. “Why did somebody get shot here, of all places?”
How Pass ended up in Bath Beach, about three-and-a-half miles away from the building where the double murder took place, is still under investigation, police said.
As of Wednesday evening, Pass’s car remained at the shooting scene.
Police were following protocols to the letter in investigating the fatal shooting of the person accused of the double fatal shooting.
“He was basically saying [to officers],” said Chief Chell, about comments that Pass made to the officers who’d pursued him, “‘What’s going to happen today is not going to end well.'”
“He didn’t give us a choice,” the chief continued, “charged at the officers, forced them to protect themselves.”
