PITTSTON -- A man was shot by a police officer in front of Anthracite Apartments along North Main Street in Pittston.
The question now being asked is if the shooting was justified. People who heard and saw what happened in Luzerne County think the answer is yes.
Police were called to the apartment building around 9 p.m. on Sunday.
According to authorities, a man was waving a gun around outside of the building where elderly, disabled, and low-income residents live.
A teenager in the neighborhood at the time heard what happened. She said police reasoning with the gunman wasn't working.
"The cops pulled up and told the guy six times to put the gun down, put the gun down," said Chyanne Saul of Pittston.
A woman told Newswatch 16 that she was driving when she saw three officers with their guns drawn and pointed at a man.
"He was like, 'drop your weapon, sir. We're not going to hurt you.' That's all I heard, the cop telling the guy to drop his weapon," added Maria Dombawski of Pittston.
"I heard someone say, 'drop the gun, drop the gun,'" recalled Joe Brown, the son of a resident. "This went on for a short time, maybe three minutes, then a couple minutes after that, six or seven shots rang out."
Brown was there visiting his mother Sunday night when witnesses say a man with a gun, on the front steps, refused to drop it, and police opened fire.
"They were like in order, 'boom, boom, boom, boom.' And I figured that's coming from one gun. It didn't sound like a gun fight," Brown added.
When you look at where the shooting took place, you get the feeling this could have been a whole lot worse. It took place at the top of the steps, right in front of a very busy set of doors on a warm summer night, and adjacent to the Anthracite Apartments' community room.
Only one man was shot, the one who died. The district attorney says the gunshots came from police but no officers were hurt.
Leroy Rekus says he has lived at Anthracite since just after the building opened. He also heard the shots.
"I heard the bang and I looked out and I saw 10 police cars and two ambulances here and everything."
Both Rekus and Brown say violence there is way out of the ordinary. They feel safe. Brown has no intention of moving his mother to a different apartment, and Rekus said he will stay in the home he's had for about 40 years.
The name of the man shot on Sunday has not been released.
The district attorney's office confirmed, as is customary in cases like this, the local police departments handed off the investigation to the state police and the D.A.'s office.
It's standard procedure to take the officer involved off the street pending the outcome of the investigation, but that is not any indication that he or she did anything wrong.
The officer's name has not been released.
