BERNE — Pieces of Carl Baranishyn’s life were strewn about a makeshift campsite on High Point Road Saturday, the day after, police say, he provoked two State Troopers into shooting him when he came at them with a knife in each hand. He was 51.

He had been living in an RV on top of West Mountain, across the street from a large white house with sweeping fields around it that had been in his family since the 1960s. The house with its 46 acres was sold by his late father, Carl J. Baranishyn Sr., last year; it was bought by someone from East Setauket on the north shore of Long Island.

Baranishyn Jr. had once lived on the north shore of Long Island, too. A framed certificate lies on a canvas cot in a partly collapsed tent in the woods behind the RV that attests to his wrestling prowess in high school. The Booster Club of Smithtown presented the Senior Award to Baranishyn “for outstanding team play and sportsmanship” in wrestling.

An Altamont Enterprise  newspaper addressed to him at 12 High Point Road is also in the tent along with a half-eaten bag of potato chips, neatly rolled and clamped shut. Near the tent, household goods are piled: a handmade afghan encased in a plastic bag, a carton filled with weathered paperback books and a Bible, another carton of Star Trek videos, and a third of music cassettes — Heart Brigade and Full Metal Jackets.

Some of the piled goods are covered with tarps; others are exposed to the elements. Tools and pieces of furniture mingle with framed photographs and a car battery.

The RV itself is propped up with a cement block where a truck would pull the trailer. The back end has tar-paper patches and a tarp on top. On a worn bench beside the door, two very large jars look to be fermenting fruit. The trailer door is sealed with a strip of tape, labeled NYSP, for New York State Police, and dated April 23, 2016.

Captain Robert Patnaude with the State Police described to The Enterprise how events unfolded on Friday night, April 22.

Carl Baranishyn Jr. call 9-1-1 around 11 p.m., threatening to kill himself or kill police, he said; Baranishyn had called from his home on High Point Road. Two State Troopers, in the same patrol car, arrived at the scene at about 11:30 p.m.

“He came down the road, walking toward them,” Patnaude said of Baranishyn.  One Trooper got out of the patrol car and walked beside it as the other one drove.

As they got closer to Baranishyn, both Troopers got out of the car.  “Numerous  commands were made for him to drop the knives,” Patnaude said. “He kept coming. They were forced to shoot him.”

Both Troopers fired, using their issued weapons.

“He was shot three times,” said Patnaude. “As soon as he was down, the Troopers started CPR,” he said. “Another Trooper arrived with an AED,” he said of an automated external defibrillator, “and hooked it up….They continued with the CPR until the rescue squad arrived,” he said referring to the Helderberg Rescue Squad.

The first aid was to no avail. “He was pronounced dead,” said Patnaude.

The names of the Troopers are not being released as the investigation by the State Police and the Albany County District Attorney’s Office is ongoing.

Patnaude said a taser wasn’t used because  “a person coming at you with a deadly weapon can close the distance fast. A taser has two prongs. They both have to attach” in order for the stun gun to temporarily knock down the target. Patnaude said one prong could miss or not penetrate clothing and then, he said, “The subject is on you.”

“When someone uses deadly physical force, like a knife, you have to react,” Patnaude said. “Our goal isn’t to kill; our goal is to stop the aggression….It’s not an exact science,” he said.

Asked about shooting a limb or a shoulder to stop an onslaught, he said, “When you shoot a gun, you aim for center mass, the chest area, to give you the most room for hitting. You’re likely to miss a leg, which is narrow. The torso is where the vital organs are.”

The day after the shooting, on Saturday, Dr. Michael Sikirica, Albany County medical examiner, performed an autopsy. Sikirica, in addition to doing the autopsy, also listened to a recording of the 9-1-1 call that Baranishyn had made on Friday night and determined the cause of death was “suicide by police,” said Patnaude.

Sergeant Rick Parent with the Delta Police Department in suburban Vancouver, British Columbia, for his 2004 Ph.D. thesis, “Aspects of Police Use of Deadly force In North America — The Phenomenon of Victim Precipitated Homicide,” produced some of the initial research on what is now known as “suicide by cop.”

He found that about half of the 843 police shootings he investigated were victim-precipitated homicides, defined as “an incident in which an individual bent on self destruction engages in life-threatening and criminal behavior to force law enforcement officers to kill them.”

“Theoretically, suicides are preventable; however, realistically they may not be avoidable because of the nature of the plan or the point where first responders encounter the suicidal individual,” writes Tony Salvatore in “Suicide by Cop: Broadening our Understanding,” in the September 2014 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin.

“SBC often is unpreventable,” he writes. “This must be considered in the aftermath regarding the officers who were coerced to be the unwilling means.”

Asked if suicide by cop is something the State Police frequently encounter, Patnaude said, “We’re aware of it...We don’t have a lot of shootings.”

He said the State Police have a “robust employee assistance program” that provides counseling when needed.

“Nobody wants to take a life,” he said.

Police executed a search warrant for the trailer where Baranishyn had lived. “We didn’t find anything that would show what caused him to want to die that night,” said Patnaude. There was no suicide note; there were no medications, he said.

“There are a lot of different kinds of people in this world,” said Patnaude. “We see it all.”

Patnaude said police had talked to Baranishyn’s son about his death but he did not disclose his name or location.

His father, Carl J. Baranishyn Sr., had been active in Republican politics and run for Berne supervisor in 2009.

His father’s obituary — Baranishyn Sr. died on Feb. 28, 2016 — listed Baranishyn Jr. as a survivor along with three brothers: James of Taiwan, Victor of Louisiana, and John of Nebraska, none of whom The Enterprise could reach.

The bits from social media were as scattered as the campground possessions on High Point Road. The last entry on Carl Baranishyn’s Facebook page is from Nov. 24, 2015: “Anyone feel alone even with others are around?” he had asked.

The page says he was from Smithtown, New York and lived in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. It lists Melinda Steimling as his daughter.

Her facebook page says, “So I lost another man that helped raise me!!! Carl Baranishyn Jr., I will miss you at least you have no more pain I love you.”

Neighbors are few and far between on West Mountain. Down the gravel wooded High Point Road apiece is another house, apparently uninhabited, with a for-sale sign out front. On nearby Sickle Hill Road Saturday, several neighbors knew Baranishyn had lived in the camper at the mouth of High Point Road but said they did not know him.

“We keep to ourselves up here,” said Joseph Monette.

Chris Melco, who lives in Rotterdam, said he owned property “around the corner” from High Point Road and had known Carl Baranishyn Jr. for 12 years, but did not want to talk about his life to a reporter. “I was pretty upset about it,” he said of his death. “I’d meet him on the road and shoot the shit and that’s not going to happen anymore.”

Melco said people want to but can’t rationalize or explain why someone would kill himself at the hands of police. “People can’t understand that. You can’t rationalize it.”