Mom of Brooklyn man shot by cops during road rage clash says he has severe mental illness
The mother of the man shot by police in Brooklyn for refusing to drop a box cutter said her son suffers from severe mental illness, and for years she has been worried he would meet an untimely end.
Adiel Vassell-Cox, 32, was shot in the chest on Avenue K near Utica Ave. in Flatlands Wednesday after cops say he wouldn't drop a box cutter during a fight with another man.
'He has mental health [issues],' Vassell-Cox's mother, Joan Vassell, told the Daily News on Thursday, shocked to learn of the shooting.
Vassell said her son, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, lives in a group home in East Flatbush more than 2 miles away from where he was shot.
'He's a good, kind, quiet kid, stays by himself,' the distraught mother said. 'He grew up in the church, he's a church kid.'
'I keep on telling him whatever medication they're giving him, it's not working.'
Vassell said Friday that her son is in a coma at Kings County Hospital, his heart failing, and has undergone two surgeries because his colon has been destroyed.
The altercation began around 1:50 p.m. when Vassell-Cox threw an object at a passing BMW, causing the driver to stop, get out of the car and confront him, Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said during a news conference Wednesday.
As the men struggled, two passing detectives from the 63rd Precinct's detective squad who had just finished lunch spotted the fight and pulled over to intervene. Vassell-Cox was armed with a box cutter.
While trying to separate the men, one of the detectives spotted the weapon and ordered Vassell-Cox to drop it multiple times, Kenny said.
Vassell-Cox ignored the detective and walked away from the officers, around the parked BMW and back toward the driver, but one of the cops got in the middle of them in an attempt to deescalate the confrontation.
But Vassell-Cox walked toward the detective, box cutter in his right hand, and the cop fired off one shot, striking him in the chest.
'This person came within 3 to 4 feet of our detective with a boxcutter out in his hand, refused numerous directives to drop the weapon,' Kenny said. 'So the officer felt he was an immediate threat to himself and to the person this subject was originally trying to stab.'
Vassell said when Saheed Vassell, another Black man with mental health difficulties and a similar last name, was fatally shot by police on Utica Ave. in 2018, she rushed to the area where that shooting took place, fearing the worst.
'I ran over there, I thought it was my son. I thought my son was dead,' she said.
Vassell said her son went to school in Albany until he smoked marijuana laced with K2, causing a profound change to his mental health and went missing.
'Then he went crazy,' she said. 'We couldn't find him in 2019 to 2020. He ended up in Boston.'
'I thought he was also dead then,' said Vassell.
Vassell-Cox was transferred from a mental health facility in Boston to King's County, said his mother.
A witness to Wednesday's chaos saw the shocking incident unfold.
'I was standing right across the street,' said Faylynn Dube, 37, a security guard. '[The driver] got out the car and was screaming, 'What did you do that for?' He went into the trunk and pulled out a black metal object and he was using it like a weapon. The other guy pulled out a box cutter. They were in each other's faces. The undercover cop came and intervened. He was trying to stop him from stabbing him up.
'The guy with the box cutter went around the car and came at him,' Dube said. 'The cop pulled out a gun and shot him. It was one, clean shot to the chest and he fell to the floor.
'It was like a road rage incident. It didn't have to rise to the level of gun violence.'
Mother and son had made plans to get together the day before Vassell-Cox was shot, but he never answered his phone that day, said Vassell.
'I spoke to him on Sunday,' she said. 'I told him I was going to visit him and we were going to the movies on Tuesday.
'Even people who look sane have mental health,' Vassell said. 'It's a disease and my son has it.'
With Rocco Parascandola and Thomas Tracy
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