There is a dead man on his back in the street outside Twice Sold Tales, on John Street, half a block east of Broadway. I have a perfect view of the scene from my apartment window. The man is naked but covered in a white sheet. His face and body and legs are hidden from view, but his white feet are poking out of the sheet. Clumps of his clothes are next to him. (Some people in the building watched the cops strip him naked and got a look at all his bullet wounds.) His shoes are off and they lay near his feet. The dead man is white and he lived on the street, according to a chaplain who explained a little bit about what was going on when I arrived home to my block cordoned off in yellow tape about a half an hour ago. Apparently the dead man was wielding a gun and was perceived to be enough of a threat by the cops—some say he was firing the gun, everyone’s account is different—that they shot and killed him. A minute ago three cops were scanning the exterior walls of Perfect Copy & Print, presumably looking for bullet holes. Another just shined his flashlight on an old-fashioned hand pistol with a wooden handle on the sidewalk just in front of KT Imports (that’s the sign on the empty storefront between Perfect Copy & Print and Twice Sold Tales). They’re not touching it.

According to someone in my building, the shots rang out sometime after 8 o’clock—meaning, about two hours ago—and yet the guy is still there on the ground. According to this source, who is a 31-year-old musician who is currently staying with a friend of his in my building, no ambulance ever arrived, but according to someone else an ambulance and firetrucks arrived right after the shooting and then left.

He was working on his music when it all went down. He’s what he remembers:

“Basically, I was working on my music and I heard a bunch of shots, like firecrackers, because when there are lots of shots that’s what they sound like. So I jumped up and went to the window and noticed that, maybe like six or seven cops were aiming but not shooting anymore—they were already done—at the suspect who was already on the ground and [the suspect] appeared to have a gun near his hand but he wasn’t holding onto it anymore. I could tell that he’d been shot because he was slumped over very awkwardly. I saw his face, unfortunately. That was the worst part. I’ve only seen one other person die. His arms were still moving around in the beginning, that’s probably why they were still aiming. He was convulsing.”

“Right after this I noticed there were three or four more cop cars, and then I noticed that there were three or four more cops on foot, and cop cars still kept coming. And no ambulance was to be found. It was just odd. After they shot him, they waited a long time, and then one of the cops said to one of the officers to go get the rifle. So he went to the back trunk and opened a backpack and got a rifle to make sure they could aim it at him when he could obviously not do anything, he was laying there slowly dying. His face was white—like, you’re dying, you have no oxygen, all the oxygen’s going away, you’re dying. And then they all started walking together, like six or seven cops, but taking very, very long, and finally they get to him, with their guns pointed, and tell him to get on his stomach. In which case he obviously didn’t do anything. Basically the whole time they were approaching him he was dying. Then they waited a while longer, maybe a few more minutes at least, and then they finally moved over to him and knocked away the gun [that was near the dead man’s hand]. Someone else downstairs told me that he had a big huge gun and was shooting into walls and things, but I didn’t see that, I don’t know if that’s true.”

“They”—the cops—”kind of picked him up after they finally got to him, after they kicked the gun away, they picked him up kind of to turn him on his stomach, and his head smashed into the ground. It was really bad looking—they just picked him up and his head smashed into the ground. And then I didn’t see the rest, but someone who kept watching saw them strip him naked. A bunch of people in the apartment saw them strip him and saw him naked in the street covered in bullet wounds.â€�

“Two accounts that I heard downstairs were that (1) maybe he was shooting at cops, but I didn’t see any cops wounded in the area, and (2) that he had a big gun and he was shooting holes in walls. Someone else said maybe he just shot a bullet into the air. The cops were right along Broadway and he was in the middle of the block, in front of Twice Sold Tales.”