Man shot by trooper was facing harassment charges

Santos Laboy was accused of intimidating laundry employees

The 44-year-old man armed with a knife who was shot and killed by a state trooper near Boston University on Friday was wanted on charges of criminal harassment, distribution of obscene matter, and annoying a person of the opposite sex, officials said Monday.

Santos Laboy was being sought on arrest warrants issued out of Roxbury Municipal Court when BU police spotted him Friday afternoon. A trooper who was assisting the university police fatally shot Laboy when he allegedly refused to drop a knife and made “threatening gestures.’’

Laboy was armed with a folding knife with a locking blade, said Jake Wark, spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley. The district attorney’s office confirmed Monday that the arrest warrants were active when BU police encountered Laboy.

The general manager of Laundry Basket on Beacon Street said police told her that Laboy was the man slipping lewd photographs under the door during the night shift. Angela Melanson said last week that police caught the suspect on camera in the act.

She said a man later called the business and told employees they had “made a deal with the devil” and that he planned to “get them.”

Three people quit their jobs at Laundry Basket as a result of the harassment, Melanson said.

According to Wark, Laboy was also facing a warrant out of Middlesex County for a probation violation.

Laboy’s sisters said their sibling showed signs of mental illness at a young age, had refused recent offers of help or medication, and was violating his probation stemming from a 2009 incident where Boston police used a beanbag shotgun to take him into custody.

Conley’s office is investigating the use of deadly force in the Laboy incident.