Knife-wielding man shot by NYPD charged for stabbing church guard: cops

The knife-wielding man who was shot by police minutes after he allegedly stabbed a Queens church security guard has been charged, police said Friday morning. 

Richard Moncrieffe, 59, was shot when he ignored officers’ commands to drop the knife outside the First Presbyterian Church on 164th Street in Jamaica around 3:45 p.m. Thursday, authorities said. 

By Friday morning, he remained hospitalized but was charged with assault, menacing a police officer, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon, cops said. 

Moncrieffe has no known criminal history, but a history of mental illness, police said. 

The guard was stabbed outside the church’s administrative building after a woman noticed a man acting “erratically” with a knife in his hand, NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said during a Thursday evening press conference. 

The injured guard retreated back inside the building and 911 was called. 

The suspect was spotted on an adjacent staircase of the church once police arrived, Chell said. 

“He was advancing on our officers and they had to make a tough decision,” Chell said, noting the officers knew when they arrived that a victim had already been stabbed.

Both Moncrieffe and the wounded guard were hospitalized in stable condition. 

The officers were also taken to a local hospital.

Chell said the guard’s actions prevented Moncrieffe from potentially getting into the church’s administrative building, which was occupied at the time.

“That individual gets into the building, this is a different news conference,” Chell said.

The shooting was one of three incidents in which NYPD officers fired their weapons at an armed suspect on Thursday. 

Hours earlier, police fatally shot an armed Brooklyn homeowner, who they say “charged” at officers, as they were responding to a burglary call at his home.

Then later around 8 p.m., police shot a gun-wielding man who became sandwiched between cops on the catwalk next to subway tracks in the Bronx – and allegedly refused to drop the weapon. 

He was hospitalized in stable condition.