Gidone Busch or Gary Busch (1968 – August 30, 1999) was a mentally ill Breslover Hasid who was shot and killed outside his apartment in Borough Park, Brooklyn by four officers of the New York City Police Department, who fired on him at least 12 times. The killing was highly controversial, because although Busch was armed at the time, the weapon he brandished was a claw hammer, and accounts of the incident varied widely.
Background
Early life
Gidone Busch was born to Norman Busch, a dentist, and his wife Doris, a divorce mediator. He had a brother named Glenn. At one point, Norman and Doris divorced, whereupon Doris married Howard Boskey, a psychiatrist. Busch grew up in a comfortable suburban home in Dix Hills, New York.
College years and mental illness
In 1991, while Busch was a third-year medical student at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York City, a routine urine test revealed that he had IgA nephropathy, an immune system disease that could lead to kidney failure. The revelation shook Busch deeply, causing him to drop out of medical school. He read books on philosophy and immersed himself in music in a quest for meaning in life. Busch decided to explore a path to spiritual enlightenment in his own religion of Judaism, and he promptly moved to Israel. During his seven years there, he vacillated between various Jewish sects, starting with a conventional Orthodox yeshiva in Jerusalem, continuing on to Chabad, and then to a Na Nach yeshiva in Safed. Eventually, Busch went back to the more mainstream Breslov Hasidic group.
The diagnosis also triggered immobilizing depressions in Busch, which later developed into serious mental illness. Busch's mental health history included three involuntary commitments at a hospital on Long Island, where he had made threats to his parents, and evinced signs of paranoid schizophrenia. He once became very agitated, and kicked a hole in the wall of his room at his mother's house, saying afterward, "I can't believe I did that. I love this house. I grew up in this house."
Borough Park
Busch's spiritual quest led him into taking up residence on 46th Street in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, New York, a neighborhood with a prominent Orthodox Jewish population. At times, Busch would enjoy music, or the quiet grace of celebrating the Shabbat with friends. During other times, when he neglected to take his medication, he wouldn't look up from his prayer book or his food.
In 1997, Busch entered a residential program for the mentally ill in Borough Park, but soon checked himself out, against the advice of doctors, who said they did not believe he was capable of living on his own. He took computer training courses with plans to go into business designing web pages. Busch would often be seen walking around talking to himself, and wearing heavy clothes in mid-summer. He procured a claw hammer, which he called his "staff", carved on it the tetragrammaton, and danced around with it in prayer. He meditated while playing loud music, or prayed so loudly that the neighbors complained.
In the beginning of August 1999, three weeks before his death, Busch met a female acquaintance from Israel, Netanya Ullman, on the New York City Subway, and they decided to get married.
On August 29, 1999, Busch struck a neighbor's passing car with his hammer. When the driver stopped and rolled down his window, Busch swung at him and broke his nose. The neighbor filed a complaint with the police.
Police shooting and death
During the late afternoon of August 30, 1999, neighbors called police complaining that Busch had been playing music too loud, and dancing almost naked in the street. By the time police arrived, he was back inside his basement apartment with a friend, a homeless man named Percy Freeman, with whom Busch had been smoking marijuana. He waved the hammer at them, which may have appeared at first to be a flute.