Ed Shanahan, Sean Piccoli and Azi Paybarah

It did not take Prioleau long to return to his old ways, police said. Around 8 p.m. Tuesday, he was walking near the Gowanus Houses public housing complex in Brooklyn, on the edge of the Boerum Hill neighborhood. And, police said, he had a gun.

Two plainclothes officers who were patrolling the area in an unmarked car said they saw Prioleau, 30, shooting at another man near the intersection of Baltic and Hoyt streets, police said. They jumped out of the car and ordered Prioleau to drop his weapon.

What happened next unfolded in seconds, and the police were still piecing it together Wednesday morning.

The officers opened fire and dozens of rounds shattered the autumn night. When it was over, Prioleau lay mortally wounded, a 9 mm pistol near him, and the man he had apparently targeted had fled.

Chief Terence A. Monahan, the New York City Police Department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, said that the officers, whom he did not name, “immediately identified themselves as police and gave multiple orders to drop the weapon.”

Prioleau not only did not comply, but he pointed his pistol at the officers, the chief said.

“The perpetrator was discharging his gun at somebody else,” Monahan said. “The cops happen to be there when he did it. So he turned his gun on them.”

It remained unclear whether Prioleau had fired his weapon at the officers. Police were still looking for the second man Wednesday, officials said.

The officers were members of an anti-crime unit, an elite, aggressive team whose main mission is taking guns out of criminals’ hands. Anti-crime units often respond to reports of people armed with guns, or to sounds of gunfire.

It is dangerous work. Last month, an anti-crime officer in the Bronx, Brian Mulkeen, 33, wrestled an armed man to the ground. As they struggled, other officers on the scene opened fire, killing Mulkeen and the other man.

Monahan said Tuesday that the gunman in Brooklyn, later identified as Prioleau, had “an extensive criminal history, including multiple violent felony convictions.”

State records show that in 2008, Prioleau was sentenced to prison for a felony weapons-possession charge, and that he was released in August 2010.

By 2011, he was in prison again, this time on an attempted assault charge. He was released in October 2013. Then in December 2014, about two weeks after he turned 26, he was sentenced to prison again, for attempted robbery.

Prioleau was identified in police documents as a member of the Bloods street gang who used the nickname Trigger, a high-ranking department official said. He had been arrested a total of 13 times, the official said.

On Tuesday night, a stretch of Baltic Street with the housing complex buildings on either side was blocked off by police tape and vehicles, as officers flooded the block and helicopters buzzed overhead.

Elvis Peguero, owner of the Los Tios Deli Grocery on Hoyt Street, said he had heard “a lot of shots” — as many as 20, he guessed — just before 8 p.m. in what sounded like volleys coming from both sides of Baltic Street. Within minutes, he said, police officers were swarming the area.

Apartment courtyards on either side of Baltic Street were also taped off and some residents of the complex said they had been locked out of their buildings.

Shortly after 10:30 p.m., a line of officers, some in riot gear and some leading police dogs, walked across a courtyard south of Baltic Street facing the shooting site.

Shanduke McPhatter, a Brooklyn anti-gang activist, said that it was important to residents of the neighborhood that there be a full accounting of the police’s response and an assurance that the officers had not been “excessively shooting.”

“We just want to get the facts, and that’s what we’re focused on,” McPhatter said. “We want to see who fired how many shots.”

Prioleau’s mother, Lashann Tyre, said that she had spoken to her son on the telephone a short time before the shooting and that he was cracking jokes and talking about a woman he was interested in dating. She said that she was skeptical of the police account.

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t see my son shooting at the police.”

Kareem Evans Sr., a cousin of Prioleau’s who is also a minister at the Charity Neighborhood Baptist Church in Brooklyn, said that the two had seen each other briefly last week.

“Are you going to stay out of trouble?” Evans recalled asking Prioleau, who had said that he was. “I’m staying focused,” Evans said Prioleau had told him, “for my kids.”

Several hours after Prioleau was shot, police officers shot an armed man in the Bronx in an unrelated incident, officials said.

The man was at the 225th Street subway station, firing shots from the southbound platform when officers responded, officials said. The officers fired several rounds, hitting the man once in the shoulder. He was hospitalized in stable condition, officials said.

This article originally appeared in

Just Out of Prison, Gunman Is Killed by N.Y. Police

NEW YORK — Life for Nasheem Prioleau had become a series of long periods in prison, punctuated by short bursts of freedom. He had just been released on parole last week after serving a five-year sentence for robbery.

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Ed Shanahan, Sean Piccoli and Azi Paybarah

Articles written by the author

Just Out of Prison, Gunman Is Killed by N.Y. Police