UPDATE: Man shot by police after threatening officers with knife dies

HIGH POINT — A man who was shot by two High Point Police Department officers on Thursday during an incident at McDonald’s near the former Oak Hollow Mall has died from his injuries, and police identified him Friday as Najeem A. Jordan.

According to a High Point Police Department statement released at about 7 p.m. Thursday, Jordan, 50, of High Point, died after being transported to Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem following the shooting.

At a press briefing Thursday afternoon, High Point Police Chief Curtis Cheeks III said officers shot the man as he threatened them with a knife inside the McDonald’s. Cheeks said the man went into McDonald’s about 11 a.m., and someone at the restaurant soon called 911, reporting that a man with a razor was cutting himself.

When two officers arrived soon after, the man had a knife. The officers tried to talk to the man and de-escalate the situation, but the man threatened the officers, who both drew their guns and fired, Cheeks said.

No one else was reported injured.

In recordings of a pair of 911 calls, a male McDonald’s employee can be heard telling an emergency dispatcher that a man in a gray hoodie was cutting himself with a razor in the lobby.

The employee called back after a few minutes to say the man had spit blood on one of the restaurant windows.

“I need an officer over here ASAP,” the man said. “I need him to get here as quick as possible.”

The McDonald’s employee ended the second call by saying he was worried the man might hurt someone in the restaurant.

The officers involved in the shooting, whose names weren’t released, were placed on administrative leave, as is the police department’s protocol, Cheeks said.

The State Bureau of Investigation will handle the case because it involves officers firing their weapons.

Early Thursday afternoon before the press briefing, as dozens of law enforcement officers gathered inside and outside the McDonald’s, several employees who were in a parking lot declined to be interviewed by The High Point Enterprise, though a woman said one of her coworkers was traumatized by the incident.

Curious people at the former mall approached media representatives and law enforcement to ask what had happened.

The last shooting by a High Point police officer happened in May 2023, when an officer shot and killed a man who reportedly approached him while holding a rifle at a house on Heidi Drive in the northwest part of the city.

pjohnson@hpenews.com | 336-888-3528 | @HPEpaul

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