Killing of Gidone Busch

The killing was highly controversial, because although Busch was armed at the time, the weapon he brandished was a claw hammer, and accounts of the incident varied widely.

Busch's mental health history included three involuntary commitments at a hospital on Long Island, where he had made threats to his parents, and evinced signs of paranoid schizophrenia.

"[1] Busch's spiritual quest led him into taking up residence on 46th Street in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, New York, a neighborhood with a prominent Orthodox Jewish population.

[1][3] In 1997, Busch entered a residential program for the mentally ill in Borough Park, but soon checked himself out, against the advice of doctors, who said they did not believe he was capable of living on his own.

[1][3] In the beginning of August 1999, three weeks before his death, Busch met a female acquaintance from Israel, Netanya Ullman, on the New York City Subway, and they decided to get married.

[1][2][3] During the late afternoon of August 30, 1999, neighbors called police complaining that Busch had been playing music too loud, and dancing almost naked in the street.

By the time police arrived, he was back inside his basement apartment with a friend, a homeless man named Percy Freeman, with whom Busch had been smoking marijuana.

[1][2][3][4] At 6:40 p.m., police received an anonymous 9-1-1 call about a man living at 1619 46th Street, Busch's address, who was menacing neighborhood children with a hammer.

Freeman came up the stairs, and told police "Don't worry about the hammer, it's a religious object," as officers wrestled him to the ground and handcuffed him.

The officers called for the Emergency Service Unit, standard procedure in the New York City Police Department in situations involving a mentally disturbed person.

According to police, he then ran up a narrow stairway from the apartment, struck Sergeant Terrence O'Brien with the hammer several times on his left arm, then rushed past other officers.

"[1] In the aftermath of the killing, many neighborhood residents gathered in the street, chanting "Justice" while occasionally throwing objects at police.

[3] At a news conference the following morning at City Hall attended by Mayor Giuliani and Jewish community leaders, Police Commissioner Howard Safir stated that seven independent witnesses confirmed that Busch hit Sergeant O'Brien with the hammer.