Police officials announced that the man killed by plainclothes narcotics officers in Brooklyn Sunday night had been on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Darin Richardson had shot and wounded a Cobb County, Georgia police officer in 2005 and had been on the run the past two-plus years.
Richardson was being followed by police after they suspected he had a concealed weapon (he had been "fiddling with his waistband") as he left a bodega in East New York. According to the NYPD, two officers, in plain clothes but with their badges around their necks, asked him to stop repeatedly, but Richardson allegedly drew his stolen .38-caliber pistol and pointed it at the officers.
The police fired at Richardson five times, with two hitting him. Richardson managed to travel two blocks away while wounded, but was later pronounced dead at the hospital. The police department said the officers who fired the shots were sober and that the shooting "appears to be within departmental guidelines, for sure." Police also say witness accounts are consistent with the police version of events.
Richardson's gun appears to be the one used in the 2005 shooting. The Daily News reports he had been "staying with a friend on Clifton Place" and "went out Tuesday to go to the bodega to buy some Doritos." And police have fired at armed suspects sevens times so far this year; the Post says the most recent incident was last night, when a cop fired at a man in Williamsburg, but missed.
