The mother of a Brooklyn, NY man doesn’t seem to understand why an NYPD officer shot her son as the eleven-time arrestee lunged at the officer with a knife.

The mother of the 28-year-old man shot dead by police Friday in Brooklyn after he threatened cops with a knife says her son didn’t need to die.

“It’s not a gun, it’s not a big knife, why shoot him?” asked Liliya Pilipenko, 54, mother of Denis Volchkin. “It’s a horrible situation.”

Volchkin barged into the home he shares with his mom on E. 26th St. near Avenue X in Sheepshead Bay and choked her about 5:30 p.m. Friday, then ran off when she called police.

A pair of cops took a report and left, only to be called back around 7:10 p.m., when her son returned.

This time, they found Volchkin in the living room brandishing knives. When they demanded he drop the weapons, he lunged at them, cops said.

One of the two officers fired once, hitting Volchkin in the chest, police said. He died at Coney Island Hospital.

Let me see if I can explain this to Mrs. Pilipenko.

An edged weapon—even something as small as a paring knife or box cutter—can be incredibly lethal at close range in the right hands, and it isn’t the officer’s job to wait around to see if the man attacking him is an amateur or Jack the Ripper before opening fire.

Her son, Denis Volchkin, obvious had problems staying on the right side of the law. The Daily News said that he had “11 unsealed prior arrests,” (our emphasis), suggesting that he had a juvenile record. Two of his known arrests were for assaulting his mother, including a prior arrest where he assaulted her with a knife.

The only real question here is why the NYPD officer that shot Volchkin went against training and only fired one shot in a situation that seems to have called for a hammer (two fast shots based upon the initial sight picture).