Cops Shoot Unarmed African Immigrant By Sean Gardiner Staff Writer, NY Newsday The flashpoint sparking the fatal police shooting of an unarmed African immigrant in a Chelsea warehouse remains a mystery to investigators, officials said Friday. A plainclothes officer killed Ousmane Zango, 43, following a chase inside the storage facility, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters. But the reason for the shooting was known only to the officer, whose name was not released, and the dead man, he said. Zango was shot four times, once in the back, inside Chelsea Mini-Storage at 615 W. 27th St. around 4:20 p.m., officials said. The shooting victim was described as a repairman who worked on art objects. He came to the United States from the African nation of Burkina Faso, lived in Harlem and had no criminal record. He died at Bellevue Hospital Center about three hours after being shot. The officer, who has been on the force for three years, was placed on modified duty while the department's Internal Affairs Bureau and the Manhattan district attorney's office investigate. Kelly said key details of the shooting remained unknown because prosecutors have asked investigators not to interview the officer, citing the potential to interfere with any possible criminal probe. Kelly said police have not found any other witnesses. The shooting came less than a week after Kelly apologized to the family of Alberta Spruill, 57, a city worker who died apparently of a heart attack after a "flash grenade" was thrown into her Harlem apartment in a mistaken raid. After visiting the site of the Chelsea shooting Friday, the Rev. Al Sharpton said, "There is no way that this young man, on the face of this, should be dead. It seems that we are beginning to see a pattern of police misconduct again reminiscent of some of the days we thought we put behind us. I would hope that we are not seeing that." The Chelsea raid was the result of a tip an informant provided to the Staten Island Task Force about counterfeit merchandise. That led a squad of about 10 officers to Chelsea Mini-Storage around 3:50 p.m. Thursday with a search warrant for two rooms. On the sixth floor, officers arrested Ismalia Sow, 33, inside room 13610, which contained thousands of counterfeited CDs, videos and DVDs. A police source said that Sow and others were "basically running a store out of there." The officers found Raphael Iriebi, 36, who was named in their warrant, on an elevator in the building and arrested him. In room 5336 on the third floor, officers found more bootleg material. With two prisoners in handcuffs, police say they encountered some resistance from people who were gathered in front of the facility and arrested another man, Mohammed Sylla, 28, who isn't believed part of the counterfeiting operation, on disorderly conduct charges. Kelly said police stationed an officer outside the third-floor storage room while other officers collected evidence in the sixth-floor room. Around 4:20 p.m., the officer guarding the third-floor room was approached by Zango, police said. Zango rented a room down the hall, where he kept supplies for repairing drums, sculptures and other African artifacts. The officer was in plainclothes but wore his badge around his neck on a chain, Kelly said. Zango apparently left his storage room unlocked and approached him. Kelly said the officer who shot Zango told other officers at the scene that there was some "shoving and pushing." "This encounter resulted in a chase being conducted by the officer ... The officer chases Mr. Zango and puts a message on his radio to the effect that he is in pursuit," Kelly said. The officer chased Zango, who dropped his cell phone and a ring along the way, down three hallways, before turning right down a hallway that dead-ended. That's where the fatal confrontation unfurled. Officers on the sixth floor of the seven-story facility heard the officer screaming that shots were fired and that a man was down, a police source said. Kelly said that the officer fired five shots. Ellen Borakove of the medical examiner's office said Zango suffered gunshot wounds to the abdomen, chest and upper back and was grazed on the right arm. The bullets perforated Zango's lung, liver, kidney, spleen and stomach. Kelly said the officer made an "extemporaneous" utterance to a supervisor who arrived after the shooting that "he tried to take my gun, I had to shoot him." Kelly said that Zango had nothing to do with the counterfeit operation and was unarmed.