‘Somebody made a mistake’: Details on fatal police shooting of man inside his NJ home are released
By Bryan Ke
The New Jersey Office of the Attorney General has revealed details about the shooting and killing of an Asian man inside his home in Hillsborough during a welfare check on Sept. 28.
What happened: George Kokinakous was identified as the Hillsborough police officer who fatally shot Patrick Chin, 43, inside his home on Piedmont Path at around 4:10 p.m., according to My Central Jersey. Four other officers, identified as Robert Feriello, Thomas Gurba, Kyle Edmonds, and Dylan Ely, were also present at the fatal incident.
- According to the Attorney General’s Office, Chin was allegedly holding a 3-foot-long sword when the officers arrived at his home, prompting Feriello to deploy his pepper spray at the man and later Kokinakous to open fire at him. Chin was pronounced dead in Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at 5:28 p.m.
- The Attorney General’s Office did not release any further details as the investigation is ongoing. The office is required to investigate any fatal incidents involving a police officer during an encounter or while a person was in police custody, Planet Princeton reported.
It was a mistake: Chin had just tied the knot with his partner in June, his mother, 74-year-old Ann Chin, told NJ Advance Media. The couple was supposed to get married last year, but the COVID-19 pandemic pushed their plans to 2021.
- “I think there was a mistake made somewhere,” Ann Chin said before details about the case were released. “Somebody made a mistake, a judgment error, or something. I just can’t comprehend someone went into the house and opened fire.”
- Born in New Mexico in 1978, Chin’s Taiwanese immigrant parents came to the U.S. as graduate students. He also has an older brother named Victor, whom Ann said was very close to him.
- He grew up in a high-achieving family, and Ann Chin said he did very well academically. Chin graduated high school in Voorhees, Pennsylvania, and later attended Rutgers in New Jersey, where he took up biology and computer science.
- Chin was hired as an IT technical lead for Merck after college in 2000, and he went on to work at the company’s competitor Bristol Myers Squibb as an IT business process analyst in 2017.
- “When Patrick died, he died in the happiest state of his life,” Ann Chin said. “It’s just so hard for us to accept it. … I didn’t know what’s bothering him.”
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