Two Norristown police officers shot and killed a man who was holding a large knife and advanced toward them on Friday night, November 6, in the borough's Elmwood Park area, the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, and no officer was injured.

Source: Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, via news release

The incident began at about 8 p.m., when police received a report of a person trying to set cars on fire along Stanbridge Street in Norristown, Police Chief Michael Trail said. Officers who responded found the man in Elmwood Park holding a “large knife,” according to prosecutors, as reported by NBC10 Philadelphia.

Source: NBC10 Philadelphia

District Attorney Kevin Steele's office gave the account of the confrontation itself: officers were on the scene at around 9 p.m. at the corner of Stanbridge and West Airy streets, where they encountered a man holding a large knife. The man made threats before advancing toward the officers, Steele said in the news release, and the officers then opened fire with their service weapons.

The officers' shots hit the man, and the officers attempted to render aid, the District Attorney's Office said. He was nevertheless pronounced dead at the scene. His identity has not been publicly released; NBC10 reported it is being withheld pending notification of his family.

County detectives are investigating, as protocol requires

The shooting is being investigated by Montgomery County detectives, “according to protocol for officer-involved shootings in the county,” the District Attorney's Office said, and NBC10 reported that the District Attorney's Office and the Norristown Police Department are both investigating. That county-level review is the standard path in Montgomery County: when a municipal officer uses deadly force, detectives from the District Attorney's office — not the officer's own department alone — build the record on which the District Attorney later decides whether the shooting was legally justified.

What that investigation will have to establish is the sequence inside Elmwood Park: what the man was doing when officers arrived after the car-fire reports, what commands, if any, were given, how far he advanced with the knife, and whether any less-lethal option was attempted. None of those details has been released yet, and officials have not said whether body-camera or park surveillance footage exists.

Where it happened

Norristown is the county seat of Montgomery County, northwest of Philadelphia, and Stanbridge Street runs along Elmwood Park, the borough's best-known park and home of the Elmwood Park Zoo. West Airy Street crosses Stanbridge at the park's edge, in a residential part of the borough. Friday night's events — a report of attempted car fires on a residential street, followed by a fatal police shooting in the park an hour later — unfolded within a few blocks of homes.

For residents of Norristown and the wider Philadelphia suburbs, including the Punjabi and South Asian families who live across Montgomery County, the immediate questions are the ones the county investigation is meant to answer: who the man was, whether anyone else was at risk during the hour between the first call and the shooting, and whether the use of force followed the law and department policy. Police have not reported any other injuries or any arrests connected with the reported attempts to set cars on fire.

As of Saturday afternoon, the District Attorney's Office had released no further details beyond its initial statement, and the Norristown Police Department had not added to Chief Trail's account. Awaaz Punjab will update this story when the man's identity is released or when county detectives publish findings.