Cop in Salon Shooting Out of Medically Induced Coma: Source
The veteran NYPD officer involved in a deadly shooting at a Brooklyn salon last week has woken up from a medically induced coma on Sunday, law enforcement sources tell News 4.
Officer Lesly Lafontant, 53, was injured when 33-year-old Kwesi Ashun struck him in the head with a chair at the Gold Mine nail salon in Brownsville on Friday. Meanwhile, the man who reportedly started the whole incident has been released from jail, The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said Sunday.
The attack on Lafontant came when he and other NYPD officers were attempting to arrest Dewayne Hawkes, 26, who was reportedly urinating on the salon's floor, according to police. That's when Ashun noticed the commotion in the salon and went inside.
Police say Ashun got into a struggle with officers and they attempted to taze him but it failed to stop him. Ashun then grabbed a metal chair and hit Lafontant over the head, police said.
The officer then fired six shots at Ashun, killing him.
Ashun allegedly had some history with the NYPD dating back more than a decade, when he allegedly slashed an officer on the side of the head with a knife and injured a second officer in Brooklyn in 2004, according to the New York Times. In that incident, the suspect was subdued with pepper spray.
Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to investigate the death of Ashun, whose family says he had a mental illness.
"This is a very serious situation but the one thing that we know from the information we have so far is the civilian assaulted a police officer violently and that is not acceptable," de Blasio said Saturday.
Lafontant has been a member of the department for 21 years, officials said.
A state legislator from Brooklyn was in the area at the time of the shooting and described a scene of "mayhem."
"Children were running," Assemblywoman Latrice Walker said. "Families were afraid. My daughter was screaming."
She added, "Our community is definitely traumatized today because this was a senseless death."
This is the latest in a string of police-involved shootings across the city in recent weeks. There have been six police-involved shootings across New York City since the end of September, five of which have now been fatal.
Photo Credit: Lesly Lafontant
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