Metro

Times Sq. shooting thug also threatened cops in 2008 standoff

Darrius Kennedy

Darrius Kennedy

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The knife-wielding man killed by cops after begging them to “shoot me” in Times Square was an ex-con who once threatened officers with a screwdriver in an eerily similar incident uptown.

Darrius Kennedy, 51, who was killed in a hail of gunfire on Seventh Avenue at about 3 p.m. Saturday, was busted for menacing motorists on Broadway at 66th Street in November 2008, sources said.

“I’m going to f–k you up!” he had screamed at cops then, sources said.

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly noted the earlier incident, as Kennedy’s family accused police of being too quick to shoot during Saturday’s standoff.

“This individual was arrested for doing roughly the same thing with a screwdriver in Manhattan. He went to jail for 40 days,” Kelly said yesterday.

Kennedy, who had no known address but was believed to have been flopping in Washington Heights, was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment in the 2008 incident and served time on Rikers, sources said.

He also had been busted for pot possession seven times dating to 1978. And he was taken to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric exam in October 2008 for knocking over garbage cans on 43rd Street at Seventh Avenue.

In Saturday’s fatal showdown, two veteran patrol cops squeezed off 12 shots at Kennedy as he lunged at them with an 11-inch-long IKEA carving knife just blocks from tourist-packed Times Square.

He had been spotted by a female officer openly smoking a joint at Seventh Avenue and 44th Street at about 3 p.m. and pulled the knife and headed south on Seventh with cops in pursuit.

Two responding cops pulled their patrol car onto the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue between 37th and 38th streets, where they helped corner the ranting Kennedy, who was yelling, “Shoot me! Shoot me!”

“The officers got out of the car. As a result, [Kennedy] approached the officers with the knife. They had no place to go; they fired their weapons. It’s unfortunate,” the commissioner said.

Kelly noted cops deal with emotionally disturbed people, or EDPs, daily.

“This is what the PD has to contend with. We have almost 100,000 calls or responses to EDPs every year, and much of it is the result of people not taking their medications,” he said.

Both Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg staunchly defended the cops.

“You can second-guess all of these things. Under the circumstances, what the officers did was appropriate to the situation. They want to go home at night as well,” Kelly said. “The individual was threatening people, threatening officers.”

But Kennedy’s sister Caroline Jones said cops didn’t have to kill her brother, whom she described as a troubled but talented musician who was peaceful unless he felt threatened.

“They could have Tased him; they could have shot him in the leg just to bring him down instead of killing my brother like that. It wasn’t three rounds; it was like 12 to 15 rounds of bullets. I mean, they killed him like he was an animal,” Jones, 47, said from her home in upstate Elmira, Kennedy’s hometown.

She said Kennedy was once a professional bass player who toured with bands to countries including China, Japan and Russia.

Kennedy’s cousin, Kathy Johnson, 39, also wasn’t buying the NYPD’s claim.

“We don’t really know what really happened, but Darrius is gone. And I know there were too many bullets. I think they could have given him a warning shot, probably a shot in the leg or the arm,” Johnson said. “I know they’ve got to protect the people, but at the same token, they took somebody’s life.”

One of the two officers who fired, a 40-year-old with 18 years on the job, shot three times. His partner, 30 and a seven-year cop, fired nine times. They were two to three feet from Kennedy, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

Kennedy was hit at least seven times, Browne said, including three times in the chest, twice in the left arm, once in the groin and once in the left calf.

Kelly insisted 12 rounds was not excessive, and he said none of the cops involved could have used a Taser for one simple reason: They didn’t have one.

“There was an officer on the way there with a Taser. They were en route, but unfortunately the situation developed too quickly for them to arrive at the scene,” he said, adding that only patrol supervisors and Emergency Service Unit cops are routinely equipped with the electric shock devices.

Kennedy had shaken off multiple blasts of pepper spray to the face, which Browne said may have been diluted in the afternoon’s stiff breezes.

“He’s pepper-sprayed as many as six, seven times by four officers and sergeants. A captain felt that the wind was taking it away from him. It did not appear to affect him,” Kelly said.

Neither of the cops involved in the shooting had ever fired their weapons on duty, Browne said. They are both assigned to the Midtown South precinct.

Bloomberg called the shooting “one of those terrible, unfortunate events.”

“They tried everything possible to stop him. Nothing seemed to work. He had a knife, and he was going after people,” he said.

The mayor assured tourists that the Big Apple is a safe destination.

“We’ve worked as hard as we can to get a lot of tourists to come to Times Square. It’s unfortunate that it was there, because it’s so visible, but the real world is complex and people will understand. They won’t be able to go to another city that’s as safe as New York City,” he said.

But Johnson defended her late cousin.

“My cousin was a good dude,” she said. “This is an unfortunate thing that happened. We love him. I just don’t want it put out there that he was a deranged psycho. He wasn’t a psycho.”

Kennedy’s aunt, Margaret Johnson, was also furious.

“What happened to him was unfortunate. Don’t even ask me my opinion of the police department. I have no respect for them,” she said from her home in Hempstead, where Kennedy lived until 1978.

Additional reporting by Sally Goldenberg and Larry Celona