A men­tal­ly ill man who threw bricks at pass­ing ve­hi­cles and at­tacked po­lice of­fi­cers with a cut­lass was shot and killed in Bar­rack­pore yes­ter­day.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said Je­re­my Ram­ber­ran, 33, of New Colo­nial Road, died in the po­lice ve­hi­cle while be­ing tak­en for med­ical at­ten­tion at the Princes Town Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

Around 12.18 pm, po­lice of­fi­cers were on in­quires when they saw Ram­ber­ran throw­ing red bricks at ve­hi­cles.

Po­lice said the bricks struck at least four ve­hi­cles be­fore they stopped and tried to speak with him. 

How­ev­er, of­fi­cers said he lunged at one of them with a cut­lass. This led to an of­fi­cer open­ing fire on Ram­ber­ran, hit­ting him sev­er­al times.

A fe­male dri­ver, who was on her way to pick up her daugh­ter at school, said she nar­row­ly es­caped in­jury from a brick.

“I dri­ving com­ing down the road and slow down be­cause of the light, and when the light changed I com­ing up, and he run out with a brick and he pelt. I mash brakes and duck down. If I didn’t duck down my face, every­thing would have mash up to­day,” she re­called. 

The en­tire in­ci­dent oc­curred in front of Ram­ber­ran’s home, and his shoot­ing was wit­nessed by his 73-year-old fa­ther, Ramesh Ram­ber­ran. 

The vis­i­bly dis­traught man ex­plained that his son’s men­tal trou­bles be­gan af­ter his moth­er died from can­cer 17 years ago.

The el­der Ram­ber­ran re­called that yes­ter­day morn­ing he was at home when his son start­ed “act­ing up” and “break­ing up things” in the house.

“I down­stairs, I lock up and he com­ing and cussing and get­ting on and af­ter a while, he went out on the road, and he break up ... I don’t know how many car glass,” the fa­ther said. 

He ad­mit­ted that his son ran to­wards the po­lice with a cut­lass and was shot.

The fa­ther said Ram­ber­ran had a his­to­ry of be­ing vi­o­lent. 

He re­called one time his son went in­to an apart­ment on his prop­er­ty that was be­ing rent­ed out and chopped the ten­ant’s com­put­er and print­er.

The fa­ther, who suf­fers from arthri­tis, said his son had al­so phys­i­cal­ly and ver­bal­ly abused him. 

He said he tried to help his son with psy­chi­atric care, but he re­fused. 

“I know it have a lot of mad peo­ple out­side who need help, but he did not want no help.” 

But while he knew his son’s men­tal health chal­lenges were an is­sue, the fa­ther still ques­tioned why the of­fi­cer did not use a Taser gun. 

He said, “I have noth­ing against the po­lice. They do their best, and they try to warn him to put down the cut­lass.”