Grandma stabs four year old grandson, shot by police

ALL content used in this not-for-profit blog remain the property of their respective owners.
http://www.policeone.com/edged-weapons/articles/5897931-Cops-justified-in-killing-knife-wielding-grandma/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

An officer was justified in shooting a woman who charged at police with knives after fatally stabbing her four-year-old grandson, Buffalo's police commissioner said Thursday.

Officer Robert Yeates, who had been on the force for more than 20 years, and Officer John Mulderig, who graduated from the police academy last week, were flagged down as they drove by on routine patrol and were alerted to the wounded child, he said. They were calling for an ambulance when Fears approached.

Charlene Fears was covered in blood and had a butcher knife in each hand when she came at two officers and refused their repeated orders to drop the weapons, Commissioner Daniel Derenda told reporters Thursday, a day after the shooting inside a Buffalo home.

"It became a life or death situation for the officers," he said, citing the initial investigation.

But police said little about what happened before the shooting that led Fears to apparently stab grandson Roderick Geiger III more than once. It was likely the child's blood on her when she was shot, Derenda said. The four-year-old died later at a hospital.

Neighbors told The Buffalo News they were first alerted to the stabbing when Fears' daughter, the boy's mother, began screaming, "Somebody killed my baby" and administering CPR.

Meanwhile, relatives of the slain boy's father, Roderick Geiger Jr., said Thursday that they hadn't heard from him since the stabbing and worried about his safety.

Derenda said city surveillance cameras caught some of what unfolded in the Riverside neighborhood late Wednesday afternoon, but he declined to elaborate.