Two officers fatally shot a 61-year-old man Tuesday after police said he threatened them with a large kitchen knife in a high-rise apartment building on Kinau Street.

Residents of Pumehana, a state public housing building at 1212 Kinau St., identified the victim as Walden Dang and said he was struggling with cancer and recently received notice that he was going to be evicted.

Honolulu Maj. Larry Lawson said police initially responded Tuesday at about 3:45 p.m. to a caller requesting that police check on a suicidal man living in the building and spoke to a man who said he was OK.

At about 4:30 p.m. police received a second call, apparently from the same caller, who said someone was trying to kill him, he said. Officers found a unit’s door ajar and entered to address the threat. They were met by a man wielding a long kitchen knife and told the man to drop the knife.

Lawson said the man refused and followed the officers into the hallway, where one officer attempted to use a “less lethal” device he described as a pepper ball gun, but the device did not fire.

The man lunged at officers, and two officers fired their guns, striking the man multiple times, Lawson said.

The man was taken in critical condition to a hospital and later died. Police opened a first-degree attempted murder investigation.

Lawson said the two officers who fired their weapons are assigned to District 1 patrol and that one has 18 years and the other five years of service with the Honolulu Police Department. He said they will be placed on administrative leave as standard procedure.

Pumehana resident Kim Lindvald identified Dang after seeing him being placed into an ambulance on a stretcher. She said Dang was mentally unstable. “He gets angry very easily over small things,” she said.

She said she heard four or more gunshots from her apartment on the 21st floor of the building and that Dang lived on the 12th floor.

A clerk at a convenience store across the street said she heard six shots and ducked below the counter.

One building resident who declined to give her name said Dang was a good person and was recently giving away his paintings and other property. She said he had colon cancer and was being evicted because of an altercation with a resident in the building.

Another resident, who said he is known as “The Must,” said Dang had run-ins with other residents in the building previously but was mild-mannered with him. “Walden is a man with a lot of pressure on his mind and his heart,” he said, adding that with his cancer and impending eviction, “he probably freaked out and tripped out.”