BOSTON — A man under surveillance by terrorism investigators was shot and killed outside a pharmacy Tuesday after he lunged with a knife at a city police officer and an FBI agent, police Commissioner William Evans said.
The man refused orders by the members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force to drop his military-style knife before the officer and agent both opened fire, Evans said.
“The officers asked him several times to put the knife down,” said Evans, who did not disclose why the man was under surveillance.
Police did not immediately identify the man, but a spokesman for the Council of American-Islamic Relations identified him as Usaama Rahim of Boston. CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said he spoke with Rahim’s brother, Ibrahim Rahim, who confirmed his brother had been killed after a confrontation with police.
In a Facebook posting Tuesday, Ibrahim Rahim asked for prayers and said his brother was killed while waiting at a bus stop in Boston to go to his job.
“He was confronted by three Boston Police officers and subsequently shot in the back three times,” he wrote. “He was on his cell phone with my dear father during the confrontation needing a witness.”
He said his father heard the shots.
Hooper said Ibrahim Rahim is an imam at a mosque in the San Francisco area.
The man, who police said is in his mid-20s, had been under surveillance and confronted the investigators after they identified themselves as law enforcement and asked him to stop and talk outside a CVS pharmacy in the city’s Roslindale neighborhood at about 7 a.m. The man was on foot.
He was taken to a hospital, where he died.
The officer and agent did “what they are trained to do,” Evans said.
Evans was slated to meet Tuesday afternoon with the FBI. Police are holding a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
On Tuesday afternoon, authorities raided a home in Everett in connection with the case.
“It’s all part of a very active Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation,” said Boston police spokesman Lt. Michael McCarthy. Further details weren’t immediately available.
The officer and the agent were evaluated at a hospital for what Evans described as “stress,” though they were not physically injured.
A message was left with the FBI’s Boston office.
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