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Cops shoot knife-wielding man in North Philly

Two bullets and two Taser blasts weren’t enough to stop the crazed assailant, police said

A 49-YEAR-OLD man spent the day after his birthday in the hospital yesterday after police say it took two blasts from a stun gun and two gunshot wounds to end his violent rampage.

The chaos erupted about 5:30 p.m., when officers were called to the Tek Good Luck corner store on Cecil B. Moore Avenue near 23rd Street in North Philadelphia, Chief Inspector Scott Small said.

Customers at the store told police that the visibly intoxicated man was wielding a knife, chasing them in and out of the store. When the officers told the man, whom police said appeared to be high on PCP, to drop his weapon, he refused and instead lunged at them with the knife.

"These were uniformed police officers," Small said. "There was no question that he was threatening authority figures."

That's when the officers shot him with a stun gun. He was knocked down, but he got up again, police said.

A second blast from the stun gun didn't do the trick either, so one of the officers fired his Glock twice, hitting the man in the upper torso with both shots.

That still wasn't enough, however, and the officers had to wrestle the knife away from the man, Small said. He was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital, where he remained in stable condition last night.

Police were investigating the incident, all of which was caught on the store's surveillance camera. The officers involved in the shooting were being interviewed at the Internal Affairs Bureau, as is police protocol with officer-involved shootings.