Najee Seabrooks

Najee Seabrooks, 31, a violence-intervention specialist with the Paterson Healing Collective, was shot and killed by two Paterson, New Jersey police officers on March 3, 2023, at the end of a roughly five-hour standoff after he called 911 himself during a mental health crisis, saying people were trying to hurt him. He barricaded himself in a bathroom with knives; officers fired 15 non-lethal rounds without effect as he cut himself and set a fire, before he emerged and, according to the Attorney General's office, lunged at officers with a knife. Of roughly 220 minutes of body camera footage from seven officers later released, the knife was clearly visible in only one recording; most captured the shooting itself without a clear view of a weapon in his hand. A state grand jury declined to indict either officer in March 2025, two years after the shooting. No one has ever been charged in Seabrooks's death.

Paterson, NJ · Passaic County

• 2023: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The 911 call, the roughly five-hour standoff, and the shooting, per 220 minutes of body camera footage and seven 911 recordings the New Jersey Attorney General's office released publicly.
• Seabrooks's own family told responding officers he was hallucinating and behaving erratically, possibly from a bad reaction to something he had smoked, and was completely out of character.
• Officers deployed 15 non-lethal rounds during the standoff without stopping him; Seabrooks told police he had two knives and a gun, cut himself with the knives, and at one point poured alcohol on a fire he had started.
• The Attorney General's office identified the two officers who fired, Anzore Tsay and Jose Hernandez, both assigned to the department's Emergency Response Team; three additional officers used less-lethal force during the encounter.
• Of the released body camera recordings, only one clearly showed a knife in Seabrooks's hand; the footage capturing the shooting itself did not clearly show a weapon.
• Family members and Seabrooks's fellow crisis-intervention workers publicly questioned why officers equipped with riot gear and a shield, and trained in de-escalation, did not use Mace, flash-bang devices, or a Taser before resorting to gunfire.
• A state grand jury declined to indict either officer on March 18, 2025, two years after the shooting; New Jersey law requires all officer-involved deaths to go before a grand jury.
• The shooting prompted the New Jersey Attorney General's office to take the rare step of assuming direct oversight of the Paterson Police Department, citing a “crisis of confidence,” and to expand statewide programs for police response to mental health crises; Seabrooks's family separately filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city days before the grand jury's decision was announced.

• Whether Seabrooks was in fact holding a visible knife at the exact moment officers opened fire, given only one of seven officers' body cameras clearly captured a knife at any point and the recordings of the shooting itself did not clearly show one, was central to the family's dispute of the official account and was never resolved by any criminal trial since the grand jury declined to indict.
• Why officers equipped with a shield and riot gear, during an encounter already lasting nearly five hours, did not attempt Mace, flash-bang devices, or a Taser as a next step before gunfire has not been fully addressed beyond the Attorney General's finding that the shooting was justified.
• The full reasoning behind the grand jury's decision, beyond the Attorney General's public statement, has not been made available, as grand jury proceedings are sealed under New Jersey law.

• New Jersey Monitor — “Grand jury declines to charge cops in death of Paterson activist Najee Seabrooks”
• CNN — “New Jersey Attorney General's Office takes control of Paterson Police Department, citing ‘crisis of confidence’”
• AP, via Yahoo News — “Paterson police body-camera video from Najee Seabrooks shooting released by NJ AG's office”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs