Authorities said that a rookie NYPD officer fatally shot an unarmed man inside a Brooklyn housing project in East New York, late Thursday, Nov. 20. Melissa Butler, 27, the girlfriend of 28-year-old victim Akai Gurley, was reported feeling distraught by her mother.

Both the New York Post and the New York Daily News report that an unidentified rookie NYPD officer descended from a dimly lit eighth-floor stairwell of the Louis H. Pink Houses at 2724 Linden Blvd. near Eldert Lane, with his partner, also a rookie, when they were "startled" by the victim and his girlfriend, who entered from the seventh floor around 11:15 p.m. Police said the officer, who was on a "probationary assignment," opened fire with a single bullet shot from his police-issued pistol, striking Gurley in the chest without a word of warning. Gurley was pronounced dead at Brookdale Hospital, police said.

As the sound reverberated in the stairwell, the officers were taken to Jamaica Hospital and treated for tinnitus for ringing in their ears, according to the NYPD, NBC claims.

According to a press release, the two cops were conducting a "vertical patrol," going floor to floor to check for crime. An NYPD spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the incident is "still under investigation and that he was 'not going to get into' why the officer decided to fire his weapon."

"They didn't identify themselves," Butler, who began dating Gurley in January 2011, told NY Daily News. "No nothing. They didn't give no explanation. They just pulled a gun and shot him in the chest."

Butler told DNAinfo New York that she and Gurley had tried to take the elevator, but opted for the stairs when it wouldn't come. Butler reports that she entered the stairwell first with Gurley following directly after.

"As soon as he came in, the police opened the [door to the] eighth-floor staircase," Butler said. "They didn't present themselves or nothing and shot him. They didn't identify themselves at all. They just shot."

According to DNAinfo New York, Gurley had returned from the gym earlier that evening and had come to visit Butler around 9:15 p.m. Just a short time after, Butler had braided her boyfriend's hair inside her apartment according to The NY Daily News. When asked about the loss of her boyfriend, Butler admitted that she was "going through it."

"He was a good person. He was into making music and helping people that were struggling. He would give money if you needed it. He'd give you advice," she said.

"She keeps crying," Naomi Butler, Melissa's mother, told the NY Post. "She's very upset, she saw everything. Police shot him and we don't know why. He doesn't carry any firearms. He was just going back home, they were taking the stairs. He's a nice man. He's been together with my daughter for four years. He has one daughter as far as I know." She also said the slain man lived with his 2-year-old daughter in Red Hook, and was just about to start working for the city, according to sources.

The unidentified rookie officer is being faulted by former City Councilman Charles Barron, once a representative of the neighborhood, who believes this incident resonates with similar fatal police shootings on Staten Island and in Ferguson, Missouri: "This young man should still be alive today," Barron said. "This is madness. It must stop. People are outraged. This is happening all over the country."

Like wise, The New York Times said the incident brings to mind a similar 2004 conflict where officers patrolling a Bedford-Stuyvesant public housing building fatally shot 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury Jr. as he tried to exit a stairwell.