A man in Pennsylvania was shot and killed by police when he tried to run them down with his car on Tuesday.
Police had been searching for 52-year-old Joseph A. Pacini of Clifton Heights for posting threats on social media against both the FBI and the police and confronted him in his car in Upper Darby, a suburb of Philadelphia.
Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood reported that after ordering Pacini out of his car, the man gunned his engine and threatened to run the officers down. Chitwood said that five officers opened fire and “did what they had to do” to protect their own lives.
The officers had picked up Pacini’s trail right after he’d driving away from a home in Clifton Heights. The officers confronted the man in his car at an intersection in Upper Darby and he responded by jamming the car in reverse, slamming the vehicle into one of the officer’s cars.
The man had brought the attention of authorities after he recorded and posted several Youtube videos, one in which he threatened cops and warned that he would not let them arrest him.
“Clearly these guys want me dead or in prison, and there’s no way in hell I’m going back in prison,” Pacini said of police on a video. “No [expletive] way. So to the police, to the FBI, to the CIA agents, I’m not taking a fall for my family anymore, okay?”
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