On May 26, Buffalo Police responded to a domestic violence call on the city’s East Side. A 911 call came in. A man had locked his wife in a room. He had a pistol. He said he was going to kill her.
That’s the worst kind of call a patrol cop can get. The victim is somewhere inside. The suspect is armed and isolated. Family is on scene urging entry. Every second matters and every second is dangerous.
The Entry
Officers entered the home through a side door. The wife was located in a locked room. The suspect — 33-year-old Minhaz Siddiqui — was in the kitchen. He refused to come out.
Officers moved on him.
What followed was close-quarters grappling. Siddiqui — reportedly a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu — fought through the initial restraint. Officers wrestled him to the ground. They got one handcuff on him.
That’s when it went sideways.
The Shooting
Siddiqui had a pistol in his waistband. Concealed under his shirt. With one cuff on his wrist and officers on top of him, he pulled it.
He fired 8 rounds.
Officer Marc Hurst — a 9-year veteran assigned to C District — was hit 6 times. Once in each calf. Once in the thigh. Once in the upper arm. Two rounds caught by his vest, striking his radio and his taser.
Officers returned fire. Three rounds. They struck Siddiqui.
Both men were transported to Erie County Medical Center. Both are expected to survive. The wife was located in the locked room and was also taken to the hospital for treatment.
What Went Right
The vest. Period.
Two rounds were stopped by the carrier. Body armor is the reason Officer Hurst goes home. The radio and taser sit center-mounted on the carrier — those rounds were going where they were going to do the most damage. They didn’t get there.
Return fire discipline. Three rounds outgoing against eight incoming. Under active fire, with an officer down, in close quarters, the response was measured. No spray. No volume dump. Three controlled rounds, and they landed on the suspect.
Where the Tactical Question Lives
The gun was on him the whole time.
Concealed in the waistband. Hidden under the shirt. Through the verbal commands. Through the grappling. Through the takedown. Through the first cuff going on. The pistol was there the entire time.
The question isn’t whether the shoot was justified. It was. The question is how the gun made it all the way to the trigger pull.
The dispatch information said armed. The threat profile said pistol. And the pistol was still in his waistband when one cuff was on his wrist.
Close-quarters control of a resisting suspect — particularly one with combat sports training — eats time and attention. Every second hands are on him is a second hands aren’t searching him. The grappling phase created the window for weapon access.
This isn’t a criticism of the officers in the moment. They were in a residence, with a known armed suspect, with a victim somewhere inside. The decision to act was the right one. The takedown was the right call.
But the gun got to the trigger pull. That part has to live in the after-action.
Graham v. Connor
The use-of-force analysis is straightforward.
Under Graham v. Connor, the reasonableness of an officer’s use of force is judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, weighing the severity of the offense, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat, and whether he is actively resisting or attempting to evade.
Severity: felony domestic violence with a deadly weapon. Death threats. Victim locked in a room.
Immediate threat: yes. The suspect fired 8 rounds at officers. He hit one of them six times.
Resistance: active. Grappling. Refusal to comply. Then escalation to deadly force.
The officers returned three rounds at a man who was actively shooting them. There is no closer call than that. This is a textbook justifiable use of deadly force.
The Reflection
Domestic calls aren’t predictable. They never were. But the pattern this incident fits is one every patrol officer needs to read closely: armed suspect, locked victim, close quarters, family urging entry, a fighter with a hidden gun.
A black belt grappler with a concealed pistol on a domestic call is a worst-case profile. And it played out in a Buffalo kitchen this week.
Officer Hurst is alive because of his vest. Siddiqui is alive because the officers fired three rounds, not thirty. The wife is alive because somebody picked up the phone.
The bodycam is out. The investigation will continue. The charge is first-degree attempted murder.
