A retired police officer has been killed after clashing with police in Staten Island.

Police said Jason Aiello yesterday morning walked out of a psychiatric ward, where his family had taken him Monday evening after his behavior had become increasingly erratic during the previous week. Officials at the hospital called the police after the former police sergeant, 36, left the Staten Island hospital at about 6:30 a.m., carrying a black Bible.

Shortly afterward, police responded to 911 calls from Aiello’s street in Rosebank, including one from Aiello’s mother, and arrived to find him outside his house, armed and trying to force his wife and three children into a car while ranting about “the Lord.” Witnesses said Aiello waved a gun and screamed at his wife to “get in the f—ing car” while their children, ages 3, 5, and 7, stood nearby.

Aiello was wearing a holstered Sig Sauer handgun, and after one of the two police officers forcibly removed Aiello’s weapon and began to handcuff him, he broke free, produced a second handgun, and fired three shots at them from close range, police said. The officers took cover behind two vehicles across the street and fired 19 times as Aiello continued to shoot at them from inside a nearby car. In the melee, Aiello was fatally wounded, hit once in the head and twice in the shoulder. No one else was harmed.

A spokesman for the police department, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, said the two officers “took appropriate action” in the shooting, as their lives were in danger.

Aiello joined the police force in 1994, attaining the rank of sergeant before retiring with a knee injury in 2006. Police officials said he exhibited no sign of dangerous behavior during his tenure.

Aiello later worked as a bodyguard for a jeweler in Staten Island, Louis Antonelli, and was nearby when two men shot Antonelli to death last April. The FBI reportedly is investigating the murder for links to organized crime.

A neighbor of Aiello’s, Carol Vaughn, 62, described the former sergeant as a kind man who would help her and her husband around the house, but she added that he had psychological problems and had suffered a nervous breakdown.

“I guess something must have snapped,” Ms. Vaughn said. “He was a nice guy, a very, very good father and husband. I’m just stunned.”