Emotionally Disturbed Patient Shot by NYPD at Hospital Was Former Officer

NEW YORK -- The 62-year-old “emotionally disturbed” man armed with a jagged piece of a broken toilet seat who was fatally shot by police during a fierce standoff inside New York Presbyterian-Brooklyn Methodist Hospital was a former NYPD cop who had been admitted to the medical facility a day earlier, police said Friday.

The patient, identified as Michael Lynch, had cut himself before taking an elderly man and a hospital security guard hostage — sparking the bloody confrontation with police — and was shot after cops twice tried to subdue him with a taser, officials said.

Lynch had joined the NYPD in the 1990s, but resigned, a police source said. Details of his career with the NYPD were not immediately available.

“Officers saved patients, doctors, nurses, and security guards at a hospital from an emotionally disturbed man armed with a weapon who was threatening to kill them,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said on X. “Make no mistake about it: the people trapped in the room with the armed and violent subject were in imminent danger.”

The 5:30 p.m. confrontation at the Sixth St. hospital in Park Slope was one of two police involved shootings on Thursday night. In the second incident, cops in Greenwich Village shot and killed a 37-year-old man who pulled an imitation pistol on them after he tried to escape a car crash, officials said.

Cops were called to the eighth floor of Methodist Hospital after Lynch “had barricaded himself inside a room with other people and had cut himself and was trying to cut other people,” said Assistant Chief Charlie Minch, the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn South.

“According to the hospital staff, the subject had also threatened to kill them,” Minch said.

Arriving cops were confronted with a scene from a horror movie: a blood-drenched door, walls and floor framed the room where the hostages were being held.

As cops approached the room the patient “came into the door frame and displayed the bloody weapon,” Minch said.

“For more than three minutes the officers stood outside the door and issued dozens of verbal commands to the subject to drop the weapon,” the chief said. “The subject refused to drop the weapon and forcefully tried to close the door to the room multiple times. Officers tried to open the door multiple times.”

During the heated exchange Lynch approached the officers with a broken piece of porcelain in his hands, the chief said.

“(The officers) simultaneously deployed a taser and discharged a firearm,” said Minch. Not hit by either, the patient returned to the room and again tried to close the door. The hospital was temporarily put on lockdown.

“For the next four minutes officers again tried to kick the door open and issued many verbal commands to the subject to drop the weapon,” Minch said. “(He) then advanced towards the officers again, still with the weapon in his hand. Officers again deployed Tasers but those deployments were not effective. Officers then discharged their weapons and the subject was struck.”

A Crown Heights caterer was undergoing dialysis on the hospital’s seventh floor when an alert for an active shooter went out over the PA system.

“I started running downstairs and I heard a bang,” 36-year-old John Brown told The News. “As I was running downstairs, (hospital workers shouted, ‘No, go that way!’ When I got on the first floor, they said, ‘Stay put.’ The hospital was on lockdown.

“I wasn’t focusing on the chaos. I was concerned for my own safety,” he said. “My objective was to be safe and get home.”

Mortally wounded, Lynch died a short time later.

A relative of the former police officer spoke to the Daily News at the Brooklyn home of the man’s wife. “He was a good man. He was a phenomenal man. I can tell you that right now,” the relative said. “We’re going through a lot right now.”

NYPD sources confirmed that Lynch had a history of being emotionally disturbed. Minch said he was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday, but it was not immediately clear why.

Lynch did not know the other patient he had threatened to kill, Minch said.

A spokeswoman for Methodist referred all calls about the patient and the harrowing standoff to the NYPD.

“Due to patient privacy, we cannot provide additional details,” the spokeswoman said. “The hospital is open and accepting patients.”

The spokeswoman wouldn’t comment if hospital administrators were reviewing their security protocols in light of Thursday’s incident.

Mayor Mamdani was briefed on the back-to-back shootings on Thursday night, but didn’t comment until Friday morning, when he called both incidents “devastating to all New Yorkers.”

“I know many are eager for answers,” he wrote on X. “The NYPD is conducting an internal investigation — I will work with Commissioner Tisch to ensure this is as thorough and swift as possible. These tragedies are painful, whether they take place steps from our home or miles away. They are a reminder of the immense work that must be done to deliver genuine public safety — work Commissioner Tisch and I are undertaking together every day.”

When asked at an unrelated press conference why he waited until the following morning to comment, Mamdani said he takes the words he uses “very seriously.”

“I think that in a situation such as this, you have to be very intentional in what you share,” he said. “And so while I was briefed about this late last evening, I wanted to make sure that everything that we shared with New Yorkers was the language that we wanted them to know about this.”

He added that the officers involved were “placed in incredibly difficult and dangerous circumstances.”

“The actions they took, they responded swiftly, and I will always emphasize, when someone has been killed, the need for a thorough investigation, as is our current process,” he said. “We are going to work to ensure the safety of both officers and New Yorkers.”

“Every day, the men and women of the NYPD put their lives on the line to protect New Yorkers,” Commissioner Tisch said on X. “Last night was no different. Officers were engaged in two police-involved shootings, and there is very indication that their actions were nothing short of heroic.”

With Rebecca White and Julian Roberts Grmela

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