The man whom police shot to death after the NYPD said he approached them with a knife in Astoria on Monday had been cared for by his elderly parents until they died a few years ago, according to a longtime neighbor of the family at NYCHA’s Woodside Houses.

“ I really feel bad to hear that this happened to him,” said neighbor Rhonda Ferguson.

NYPD officials on Wednesday identified the man as Queens resident King Wong, 60. Officers shot and killed him while he wielded a 14-inch knife that he refused commands to drop, according to police. The New York attorney general’s office is investigating the incident.

Police responded to 911 calls about a man holding a knife and acting erratically near 30th Avenue and 31st Street, NYPD Chief of Department John Chell said at a press conference Monday. Officers used multiple Tasers on the man, but they did not subdue him, Chell said.

Wong was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Chell said the man had two previous “incidents of mental disorder” involving the NYPD, but police have released no further details.

Police have killed at least 20 other New Yorkers during a mental health crisis over the past nine years, said the nonprofit New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. NYPD officers fatally shot at least 12 people citywide last year, according to Gothamist’s analysis of department data.

In a statement after Wong's death, the CCIT-NYC coalition, which seeks to reduce police involvement in mental health crises, called for a “public health response” to such crises that includes peers who have their own experiences with mental illness.

At NYCHA’s Woodside Houses, Ferguson said she believed Wong had mental health issues, but she considered him “harmless,” even after he unexpectedly entered her apartment on two occasions.

Ferguson said she knew Wong’s parents, and that his father would often hand out calendars for Chinese New Year. She said she rarely saw Wong outside the family’s apartment until he was left to fend for himself.

In recent years, Wong was often seen digging through the trash outside the building for food, according to Ferguson and another neighbor.

“ Usually, he’d be out early in the morning before it even got light,” Ferguson said, adding that she sometimes shared her own food with him.

One day in May 2023, she said, Wong came into her apartment while she was home alone and he was fiddling with a screwdriver. It was the second time he had wandered in, “so that time I got upset,” she said.

“Apparently, he's having some kind of breakdown, and I don't know why he’s focusing on my apartment,” Ferguson said.

She said she called the building’s maintenance staff and 911, and when police arrived, Wong locked himself in his apartment, according to Ferguson and another neighbor. He was ultimately carried out strapped to a stretcher and taken away in an ambulance, they said.

It’s unclear what type of services or support Wong received before or after his parents’ deaths. But his situation points to a common predicament of aging parents caring for an adult child with a mental illness: “planning for what happens when they’re no longer here,” said Carolyn Reinach Wolf, a New York lawyer who works with families of people with mental health issues.

Reinach Wolf said she often advises parents to establish who the next guardian will be after they die, whether a sibling or someone appointed by court. She added that parents could connect their loved one with local community organizations so they’re “on their radar.”

The city’s B-HEARD program is designed to send emergency medical technicians and social workers, rather than police, to respond to 911 mental health calls. But those responders don’t take calls where the person is at risk of harming themselves or others.