A plainclothes police officer, responding to reports of a dispute involving a gun at a North Fordham apartment building, fatally shot a 40-year-old man, who police said was wielding a baseball bat.
Family members and other witnesses said the officer used unnecessary force to stop the man, who was embroiled in a dispute with upstairs neighbors when police arrived.
At a 52nd Precinct Community Council meeting last Thursday night, Bronx Borough Chief Thomas Purtell said the Bronx District Attorney’s Office had convened a grand jury to determine whether the officer’s use of deadly force was justified. Purtell said the grand jury will interview everyone who lives on the floor of the building where the shooting occurred.
Just before midnight on Tuesday, Dec. 9, officers responded to a call for a “dispute with a gun” at 2710 Bainbridge Ave.
When officers arrived on the scene, guns drawn, they encountered Alex Figueroa, 40, holding a wooden bat in his hand in the fifth floor hallway of the building. Figueroa, who lived on the fourth floor, had gone to the fifth floor to confront a group of men who had earlier insulted his 18-year-old stepdaughter, according to his family and witnesses in published reports.
That’s when details get murky. Police said Figueroa ignored “several orders to stop,” which is when one of the officers, who was identified as Michael Falcione, 30, a six-year veteran of the NYPD, fired a single bullet into Figueroa’s chest. Police said Falcione had never previously fired his weapon in the line of duty.
 Police said Figueroa lunged at Falcione with a raised bat. But his wife, Sandra Rodriguez, who was in the hallway when her husband was shot, told reporters that Figueroa never made a move toward the officers. Rodriguez said that when officers encountered Figueroa upon reaching the fifth floor, one officer said, “Don’t move” once and then fired. “Not even five seconds,” she said. “’Don’t move,’ then bang.”
 “What happened that night was not justified,” said another resident at the building who declined to give his name.  “Cops are supposed to give a perpetrator a warning before they shoot, and they shouldn’t shoot a person in the chest or other vital places.”
Another unidentified resident of the building, who said he was a friend of the devastated family, said, “Oh God, [Figueroa] was a good man. He never was in trouble. A family man who always stayed at home, and took care of his kids and wife. He went to church.”
 “My husband was a church-going man,” Rodriguez told the Daily News. “We moved to this country two years ago to pursue the American Dream and look what happened to us. Look at what we get.
The grand jury will have to determine whether the officer believed he was at risk of being killed or seriously hurt by the suspect, regardless of whether or not the suspect was carrying a weapon.
  The family held a wake for Figueroa on Dec. 16. The body was taken to Puerto Rico the following day for burial. The family remains in Puerto Rico, neighbors said.
 Falcione is on desk duty pending the grand jury investigation.