Officers who fatally shot a 38-year-old homicide suspect inside a Flatbush apartment nearly two years ago will not face criminal prosecution, New York Attorney General Letitia James’s Office of Special Investigation announced. The office found that a prosecutor could not disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers’ use of deadly force against Vilmond Jean-Baptiste was justified when he advanced toward them clutching a knife on September 13, 2024.
According to News12 Brooklyn, the NYPD Brooklyn North Warrant Squad went to Jean-Baptiste’s apartment that day to serve a warrant, and officers found him wielding a knife in the shower. Police had told the outlet that Jean-Baptiste was a person of interest in two separate homicides involving three victims, and that he had a prior 2015 arrest for reckless endangerment. Notably, the search itself was legally grounded not in the homicide investigation but in a far more minor matter: an open 2022 bench warrant for drinking alcohol in public, issued after a tip from a confidential source, according to the Office of the New York State Attorney General.
The entry team consisted of six Brooklyn North Warrant Squad personnel, including Sergeant Michael Filomena, the attorney general’s office said. Once officers located Jean-Baptiste in the shower, he threw a bottle at them, the station’s report noted, and he refused repeated orders to drop the knife. An NYPD sergeant deployed a Taser, but it failed to stop him. One officer warned him, “You will get tased or shot!” per the same account.
Eleven Warnings Before Twelve Shots
The state’s findings go further into the sequence of events than the initial local reporting: Jean-Baptiste ignored at least 11 explicit commands to drop the knife before moving out of the shower toward officers, who then fired 12 rounds, striking him, according to the Office of the New York State Attorney General. Three officers discharged their weapons during the encounter, per News12 Brooklyn. Jean-Baptiste died at a nearby hospital after being shot.
The Office of Special Investigation determined that officers’ actions fell within the bounds of New York Penal Law Article 35, which permits law enforcement to use deadly physical force when they reasonably believe it necessary to defend against another’s imminent use of deadly force. Investigators concluded that Jean-Baptiste’s movement toward officers with a knife, after the failed Taser deployment, met that legal threshold, according to the attorney general’s office.
A Mandated State Review Under Executive Law
Under New York Executive Law Section 70-b, the Office of Special Investigation is required to investigate every civilian fatality involving a police or peace officer, and it must publish a full public report whenever criminal charges are not pursued. That statutory duty applies regardless of whether the officer was on or off duty, or whether the person killed was armed, per the attorney general’s office. In February 2025, Attorney General James’s office released body-worn camera footage from all six officers on scene, part of a standing policy to increase transparency during active state investigations.
The September 2024 shooting also landed at a fraught moment for NYPD leadership. It happened within the first hour after Tom Donlon was sworn in as interim police commissioner, following the resignation of former commissioner Edward Caban amid federal investigations, according to CBS News. The shooting was the 12th fatal police shooting by the NYPD in 2024, according to tracking data compiled by BKReader.
Neighborhood Tension in the Shooting’s Aftermath
Jean-Baptiste had been linked by NYPD detectives to two separate violent incidents in Brooklyn that left three people dead, including a double homicide on Ditmas Avenue in Boro Park, according to Boro Park24. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, a crowd gathered outside the East 21st Street building and threw bottles at responding officers, striking one in the head, FOX 5 New York reported.
With the Office of Special Investigation’s report now public, the nearly two-year state review of the case has concluded without criminal charges against any of the officers involved.
