A 50-year-old parolee who had been out of prison for five months was shot dead by a parole officer in Queens on Tuesday after he grabbed another officer and threatened her with a knife, the authorities said. The parolee, identified by the police as Eric van Reid, of Sunnyside, was at the State Division of Parole office at 92-36 Merrick Boulevard in Jamaica for an appointment, the authorities said. He was released from prison in November after serving 19 years for rape and burglary. He had spent more than half his life in prison. Officers asked to search Mr. van Reid’s backpack about 9:30 a.m., said the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne. They saw him take something out of his bag and try to hide it in his chair, Mr. Browne said. A parole officer approached him and “he grabbed her,” said Mr. Browne. The object he was trying to hide was a kitchen knife or steak knife, Mr. Browne said, and he began “menacing” the officer with it. “He was ordered by two other parole officers to drop the knife, and she broke free,” Mr. Browne said. “He did not drop the knife, and they fired, striking him once.” In a statement, the Division of Parole in Albany said the man was shot and killed “after taking a parole officer hostage at knifepoint.” Mr. Browne said that two officers each fired at least once. The police did not release those officers’ names. The Police Department, the Queens district attorney’s office and the Division of Parole were all investigating the shooting, the authorities said. A Parole Division spokeswoman, Heather R. Groll, said the agency was conducting an internal investigation. “Our preliminary indicators show that our officers responded appropriately at this point,” she said. Ms. Groll said that state records identified the parolee as Eric Reid, and showed that his criminal record began when he was 16 and was convicted of robbing a 71-year-old Brooklyn woman in her home. He served two and a half years in prison. State records also show he later served seven years for robbery and escape. According to Ms. Groll, he walked up behind a police officer, put a gun to his head, stole his gun and shot him in the stomach, injuring him. A week later, she said, officers arrested him after he shot at a police car. He escaped from Rikers Island and was recaptured in North Carolina several months later. His most recent and longest sentence was for a 1987 crime in which he broke into a woman’s house in the Syracuse area, hit her in the head with a wrench several times, produced a knife and then raped her. He was denied parole five times before finally being released in November. There are no metal detectors at the entrance to the parole office, and the waiting room on Tuesday was crowded, as it normally is, with up to 40 people. Parolees must sometimes wait for several hours before they are called for appointments with their parole officers. A parolee can be sent back to prison for not keeping appointments or for committing even slight infractions. Ms. Groll said officers were searching parolees for weapons and contraband on Tuesday. “They do it about once a month,” she said. After Mr. Reid was seen acting suspiciously, parole officers searched him, said Mr. Browne, the Police Department spokesman. Men who had been waiting described a scene of panic. One of them, Anthony Portalatia, 43, said he heard, “What’s in your hand?” and saw a man grab the officer by the shirt just before the shots were fired. “I heard two or three shots,” he said, and then saw a man lying on the floor on his back. “We had to run to take cover. It was crazy. Everybody was running. We did not know what to do.” While parole officers do encounter dangerous situations — a parole officer helped persuade a parolee to release two women he was holding hostage in an apartment in the Bronx in February — Ms. Groll said it was “definitely not common” for parole officers to fire their weapons while on duty. The last time an officer did so was on Nov. 18, 2005, in the Syracuse area, when a parolee was shot in the knee after coming at an officer with a knife, she said. By CHRISTINE HAUSER - MARCH 31, 2009 Al Baker, Mick Meenan and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.