ONEONTA, N.Y. — An upstate New York police officer investigating a domestic incident shot and killed a man who was armed with a knife, state police said.

The Oneonta Police Department responded to a report of a domestic incident just before 1 p.m. Tuesday, state police said in a news release. 

The Oneonta officers encountered a 23-year-old man armed with a knife, police said. "During the course of the engagement with the subject, an officer fired his duty weapon, striking the subject," they said.

Kevin Marcewicz, a neighbor of the victim who witnessed the shooting, told the Daily Star of Oneonta that the man had been holding a baby in one hand and a knife in the other when police arrived. A scuffle broke out and the baby was somehow dropped as a woman and police were trying to take the child from him. Marcewicz said the man was shot twice in the chest.

"I don't even think he realized he had gotten shot at first," Marcewicz said. 

Oneonta Mayor Gary Herzig told city council members Tuesday night that officers "acted to save the life of the child by firing two shots."

The unidentified man was airlifted to Albany Medical Center, where he later died. The names of the officers involved in the shooting were not immediately released. The shooting is under investigation.