58-Year-Old Man Shot & Killed By Buffalo Police

A late-night incident in Buffalo's University Heights neighborhood leaves plenty of questions and one man dead after being shot by officers from the Buffalo Police Department.

According to information released by the BPD in the early morning hours on Friday, March 6, 2026, officers responded to a call on Minnesota Avenue and Cordova Avenue around 11 pm on Thursday, March 5, 2026, where it seems a mental health situation ended with a man holding at least a trio of people at knifepoint.

In a press conference that was held later this morning at Police Headquarters in downtown Buffalo, acting BPD Commissioner Macy detailed what happened from the perspective of the police officers and witnesses on the scene Thursday night.

The incident that led to BPD officers shooting an unnamed 58-year-old man started with a call to 911 around 10:30 pm on Thursday, with reports that there was a serious mental health issue happening at a house on Minnesota Ave. A second call came into 911 a few minutes later, reiterating the seriousness of what was happening at the house.

Paramedics arrived on the scene around 10 minutes later to deal with the situation. The 911 call was coded as needing medical help, not police, so officers didn't immediately respond to the house on Minnesota. The ambulance workers on scene radioed back to dispatchers that there was a man threatening to kill them, he had a knife, and wouldn't let them leave.

Once officers got to the house, according to reporting from the Buffalo News, the man lunged at officers. From that point, tasers were used more than once, but that didn't stop the man from trying to use the knife against officers. Officers then fired shots.

What we know right now, there is a very significant level of threat that escalated against the officers in a very short period of time.. In those few seconds that we're looking at, there is a deployment of a Taser, which multiple times the Taser was deployed, verbal commands were issued and then one officer fires his service weapon two times.
-Craig Macy, Interim Commissioner of the Buffalo Police Department

Officers at the scene were wearing body cameras, and city officials did say the footage would be released in the near future.

Like with all police related incidents that lead to the death of someone, this shooting will be investigated by the New York State Attorney General’s Office Special Investigations, a requirement that has been in effect since 2021.