ESSEX, Md. — Out of work and battling in the courts to regain visitation rights with his daughter, family members say 31-year-old Howard Sye, Junior had enough when he and his sister apparently got into an argument in the King Mill Apartments in Essex and he ended up stabbing her in the chest.
“It never went this far,” said their brother, Tabias Sye, “Normally, when they call me and they’re drinking and everything. It’s just, ‘Alright, It’ll end. They argue. They go back and forth and that’ll be the end of it. It never went this far.”
WATCH: Officers shoot & kill man who had stabbed his sister
But this time it did, and when police arrived, they had already been alerted that their disturbance call had been updated to a stabbing.
When several officers encountered Howard who was still apparently armed with a knife, police say his actions prompted several officers to open fire ultimately killing him.
“It was a family issue and the police wasn’t supposed to come in there and just kill him like that,” Tabias told us, “That’s crazy. That’s crazy, man. That’s crazy. The Essex police precinct needs to get held responsible to everybody that was out here.”
As is typically the case after a police-involved fatal shooting anywhere in the state, the case has now been handed over to the Maryland Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division.
According to police, all of the officers were equipped with body worn cameras, but that will bring little solace to those who knew the man who had been planning to attend a culinary arts school to help turn his life around.
“So many things they don’t get solved and so many things they just sweep under the rug when it comes to us versus the police,” said Courtney Watkins, one of Howard’s neighbors, “A lot of things are swept under the rug, you know?”
It’s a concern, which reaches beyond what officers faced in the seconds before they fired on Howard to the mindset they were in when they first arrived on the scene.
“That’s my blood brother, my older brother, and no answers at all… at all,” said Tabias, “That’s crazy and we’re just supposed to continue life like this?”
