Police shot and killed a man wanted in connection to three murders after he lunged at them with a knife inside a Brooklyn apartment on Friday, authorities said.
Members of the NYPD’s Warrant Squad were looking to bust 38-year-old Vilmond Jean-Baptiste on an open bench warrant when the chaos unfolded inside a building on East 21st Street near Dorchester Road in Flatbush around 5:20 p.m., police said.
As detectives entered a first-floor apartment they found Jean-Baptiste “hiding in the bathtub” and noticed he had a knife,” NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey told reporters at a press conference.
Police ordered him to drop the blade and get out of the tub but he refused.
The investigators then tried to use a taser to subdue him, but he lunged at them — and three cops fired their guns at Jean-Baptiste, according to Maddrey.
Jean-Baptiste was taken to a local hospital where he died from his wounds.
One officer was hit in the head with a bottle as police pulled Jean-Baptiste out of the building and was taken to a local hospital, according to Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
Jean-Baptiste was a “strong person of interest” in three homicides, Kenny said.
The suspect was wanted in connection to the stabbing deaths of a man, 24, and woman, 68, whose putrefying bodies were discovered in a Brooklyn apartment in July, sources told The Post.
The woman was found with stab wounds all over her body and a decomposed man was nearby in the Ditmas Avenue residence she shared with her son. A knife was also recovered.
Jean-Baptiste is also believed to be connected to a 66-year-old woman who was fatally stabbed in August in Brooklyn, Kenny said.
The suspect was believed to have been in a romantic relationship with the two female victims, police said.
“His MO seems to be that he begins to date older women and then they allow him to live in their house and use narcotics,” Kenny said.
He had one prior arrest in 2015 for reckless endangerment and had a bench warrant issued for his arrest in Kings County in 2022, police said.
