A knife-wielding Brooklyn fugitive wanted for murdering two upstairs neighbors in a deadly dispute over noise was gunned down early Wednesday after charging at police during a car stop, police sources said.
Jason Pass, 47, was shot multiple times after he ran toward the cops with his knife in hand, said NYPD Chief of Department John Chell, adding the murder suspect “didn’t give us a chance.”
Neighborhood residents described a chaotic scene where Pass got out of the car with the blade after multiple police vehicles surrounded his vehicle in Bath Beach, followed by what an eyewitness recalled as a half-dozen gunshots.
“I heard them say, ‘Drop the knife,'” said the eyewitness, a nurse who lived in the neighborhood for the last 50 years. “They said it a few times … and since he wasn’t doing it, I figured it would escalate. It was one [bullet] after another. It was scary. I was frightening. I feel bad because it’s a human being. But he’s a murderer.”
Pass went on the run Sunday night after he was caught on video fatally shooting 47-year-old bodybuilder Bladimy Mathurin and Mathurin’s 27-year-old stepson Chin Wai Mode in the hallway of their Flatbush Gardens apartment building.
The shooter’s elderly mother lives in the unit directly below the victims in the Brooklyn Ave. apartment building in East Flatbush. Pass frequently stays there and had long feuded with the family upstairs.
Detectives were investigating the possibility that Pass wanted to die from “suicide by cop” when officers caught up with him, a police source said. That theory will be hard to prove, however, since Pass died and didn’t leave a note, the source said.
“We just heard ‘Pop! Pop! Pop!'” said Bath Beach resident Debbie Delluomo. “I lived here my whole life and never seen anything like this.”
Local woman Vanessa Delcarmen, a 27-year-old college student, recalled ducking alongside family members when the shooting started.
“We got down as low as possible,” she said. “We made sure it was silent before we looked up, but we didn’t see much … I’m a veteran, so I heard gunshots before. It was like five to six shots.”
Cops on patrol in a police cruiser equipped with a license plate reader went by Pass’ car on Bay 44th St. at about 7:10 a.m., cops said. The license plate was flagged as belonging to Pass, who fled the double murder in the same dark-colored sedan, cops said.
“The officers rounded the block to verify the plate and came up on the car that was parked,” said Chell. “As they walked up to the car the male got out of the car with a knife in his hand and took off running.”
Cops stopped and surrounded Pass near the corner of Bay 44th St. and Harway Ave. after a brief chase, with police engaging the suspect in a 15-minute dialogue to drop the knife.
“What’s happening today is not going to end well,” said Pass as a hostage negotiating team sped to the scene, according to Chell. Pass, brandishing the knife, then charged one officer in a full sprint before the bullets flew, police said.
“Our officers were forced to defend themselves, to stop the threat,” said Chell.
Cops shot Pass three times in the chest and once in the left leg, police said. The former state corrections officer was taken to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, where he died a short time later.
The officers involved in the shooting were taken to Maimonides Medical Center with ringing in the ears, cops said.
Pass’ mother and older sister were unaware the manhunt ended in bloodshed.
“Oh my God!” his older sister, who did not wish to be named, told the Daily News as she scrambled to call the hospital. “This is a lot.”
Cops were working on getting a search warrant for the car, suspecting that the illegal gun used to kill Mathurin and his stepson was stowed inside.
Bath Beach residents were stunned by the Wednesday morning bloodshed.
“This is shocking,” Jennifer British, 57, told the Daily News. “I’m shaken right now … I heard it was the man who killed the two people, and I was like, ‘What? Are you freaking kidding me?’ That’s where I live!”
“It’s so quiet here,” she added. “You’d be surprised if anything happens here.”
Pass’ older sister on Tuesday confirmed the ongoing noise quarrel with the victims’ family but claimed Mathurin and his family had threatened her mom and brother prior to that and claimed the shooting was “self-defense.”
On the night of the killing, Pass went upstairs simply to talk to Mathurin “about the jumping and moving furniture and all these situations,” she claimed. Mathurin brandished a pair of scissors as Sunday’s hallway argument escalated, video obtained by The Daily News shows.
Pass was seen pulling a pistol with a green laser scope and opening fire on Mathurin as the victim’s back was turned.
The Brooklyn dad was talking to his wife, who was begging him to go back inside when Pass started blasting away, the video shows. Mathurin was repeatedly shot in the back and the head as he ran back to his apartment. Mathurin’s stepson was fatally shot trying to run to the hallway staircase, the video shows.
Just moments earlier, the two men stood toe-to-toe as Mathurin held a pair of scissors to Pass’ chest, but the gunman appeared to be in no immediate danger when he pulled his gun and started firing.
The shooter, rather than flee the murder scene immediately, waited 20 seconds for an elevator to make his escape, the video showed.
Pass had a short-lived career as a corrections officer at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Westchester and was terminated in 2005, according to Department of Corrections and Community Supervision spokesman Thomas Mailey.
The suspected gunman was fired from the department in June of that year, the same month The News reported he’d pulled a pistol on two plainclothes police officers in a road-rage incident on Ralph Ave. in Flatlands, Brooklyn.
In 2012, Pass landed a job as a conductor with the MTA, but after calling in sick for a day in May 2017, he never showed up at work again, sources said.
Pass disclosed his 2005 arrest in employment paperwork, and claimed the officers pulled a gun on him first and he took his out in self-defense, they added.
