NEW YORK -- A detective shot and killed a check-fraud suspect who threatened officers with a knife during a prearranged meeting in his home Saturday, police said.

Darryl Battle, 20, had agreed to meet with police Saturday morning in his family's brownstone in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, police and the family said. He was suspected of cashing a bad check in Manhattan on July 19, police said.

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Battle's sister and another relative were home, but asleep upstairs when Battle and the detectives met shortly before 9 a.m., cousin Nathan Archer said. His cousin said Battle would never have threatened police once he invited them into his home.

"There's no way in the world that he would have been looking to harm or evade the police," Archer, 43, said by telephone from the family's home. "He would have complied with anything they said."

Police said Battle pulled an 11-inch-long kitchen knife from his waistband and came at one of the officers after they told him to go to the precinct with them.

The detective, a trained hostage negotiator, tried to persuade Battle to drop the knife, but he backed the detective into a corner with the blade, police said.

The detective fired a single shot, which hit Battle in the torso, police said. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police said they began looking for Battle on Thursday, after he was identified as the person trying to cash a bad check at a bank. They went to his home and he wasn't there, so they left a card.

Battle called police back on Friday, saying he was going to turn himself in, police said, but he never did. Then they made the appointment to speak with him at his apartment Saturday.

They said it started off very calm, but when they told him he needed to go with them to the precinct, he said he needed to get water. He returned with the knife, and when detectives asked him to put it down, they said Battle told them he wasn't going anywhere.

When the detective told him to just back up and let the police out, Battle told them "no one" was going anywhere, police said.

Police said Battle had two sealed arrests prior to the incident.

Battle had a 6-month-old daughter and until recently worked in a clothing store, relatives said. His late mother bought the brownstone in 1999, Archer said.

Police released a photograph of the knife Battle was accused of wielding. The detective who shot him is a 20-year New York Police Department veteran who had never been involved in a police shooting, the department said. His name was not released.

The Rev. Al Sharpton spoke Saturday with Battle's sister and was looking into the incident, a spokeswoman for the civil rights activist said.

Councilman Charles Barron joined the family to call on Gov. David Paterson to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the shooting.