The officers ordered Tony Anderson to drop the gun. Anderson then tossed it toward the police, neighbors said yesterday, but his movement apparently spurred two officers to fire nine shots before the gun landed at the feet of one officer.
Anderson was hit twice in the chest. He was pronounced dead at 8:50 p.m. Wednesday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Residents in the 4200 block of Otter Street, a small street near railroad tracks, were angry yesterday about Anderson's death.
"They killed a good man this time," said Tina Williams, who grew up on the block four doors down from Anderson.
Police were summoned about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday for a report of a man firing a gun. Neighbors said Anderson, embroiled in some sort of argument, had fired his revolver into an empty lot across the street.
Several neighbors said they did not know the nature of the argument, and Anderson's family declined to comment yesterday.
Anderson had the gun when the officers arrived, but what happened next is under investigation, said Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman.
"The information that I received is that when they confronted him, at some point he produced a gun, and what that caused them to do, with their training, was to fire," he said.
Vanore said he could not comment on whether Anderson had been tossing the gun to officers when he was shot.
"The investigation will determine that. It's something we always look at," he said. "That's why we have the district attorney, Internal Affairs, and, in this case, Homicide."
But Vanore said it was important to keep in mind that the officers had been responding to a report of a man firing a weapon.
"This wasn't someone they walked up to on the street," he said. "As he turns with a gun, they're already armed with this information. . . . Whether it's leveled, thrown, or whatever, they have to take a position to defend themselves."
By standard procedure, the officers who fired will be assigned to desk duty during the investigation.
Officers drove Anderson to the hospital in a police wagon, which is common practice when police believe they can get treatment quicker that way, Vanore said.
"We do that with trauma all the time," he said.
Jessie Whitaker, who lives a few doors down, said, "Everybody was hollering, 'Take him to the hospital. Take him to the hospital.' "
Whitaker, 86, has lived on the block for 65 years and watched Anderson grow up in his parents' home, which he inherited.
"He takes care of his family. He worked every day," Whitaker said. "He was a very respectable young man."
After gardening in his small front lawn, where pink roses are blooming, Anderson often walked to her house and offered to plant extra flowers in her yard, she said.
Whitaker said many neighbors, drawn out by gunshots and sirens, watched from their porches and sidewalks as the confrontation with police unfolded.
"No one went to sleep last night," said Tina Williams.
Neighbors said Anderson's wife had been standing at the edge of the porch, between the officers and her husband. The bullets whizzed past her, knocking him back through the doorway.
"If she would have moved, she would have been shot," Williams said. She said the couple had two children and two grandchildren.
Williams said she could understand if the officers said they had been alarmed by Anderson's tossing of the gun.
"But I'm not going to go with he had the gun in his hand and he was going to use it," she said. "The gun never got above his knees."
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