A man with a knife was shot by Montreal police Thursday morning in an east-end apartment.

Annie Lemieux, a spokeswoman for Montreal police, said officers got a call at around 7:45 a.m. regarding a suicidal man near the intersection of Ontario and Nicolet Sts.

Lemieux said he lunged towards them brandishing the weapon. One shot was fired and the man was hit in the chest. The man died at the scene as a result of his injuries, according to the ambulance service Urgences-Santé.

"Our paramedics found a man, in his 30s, on the ground with one bullet in his thorax... No sign of life,'' Robert Lamle of Urgences-Santé told reporters at the scene.

Lamle says two women were transported to hospital to be treated for shock. According to Lamle, one woman was the man's wife, who was in the apartment at the time of the shooting. The other woman was nearby but not in the apartment.

"The cops, they tried to get in the apartment and then I see a guy like he goes out with a knife," said eyewitness Alen Abdel-Ghani, who lives nearby.

"This guy he was like just going straight to the cop to....and then the cop he didn't have the choice, he just took his gun and he shot the guy. The cop didn't have the chance to shot the guy maybe in the leg or the arm."

"He had been shot once in the chest," said Lamle. "There were no signs of life, following verifications maneuvers were started immediately but following further verifications paramedics - it was decided that there was no chance of revival."

"We transported his wife who was apparently inside the apartment at the time. Whether she saw everything I'm not sure but she was clearly in a state of shock," said Lamle.

In Quebec, it's the custom for another police force to launch an investigation when an officer is involved in a shooting.

Four people have been shot and killed since last spring in an operation involving Montreal police, in three separate incidents.

The incidents sparked debates about whether whether more police should carry stun-guns, whether officers are adequately trained to handle people suffering from mental illness, and whether police shootings should be investigated by other police.

A fatal shooting last June involving Montreal police that left two people dead made national headlines and prompted an angry anti-police march in the city.

Police gunfire struck Patrick Limoges, a passerby on his way to work at a nearby hospital, and Mario Hamel, a mentally ill man who lived in a downtown shelter. The police department said they were called as a knife-wielding Hamel tossed garbage in the city's downtown area.

Hamel, 40, was shot after police had apparently cornered him, ordered him to drop his weapon and pepper-sprayed him.

The 36-year-old Limoges was across the street when he was hit by a police bullet.

In January, police fatally shot a 34-year-old homeless man named Farshad Mohammadi during an altercation at a subway station.

with files from The Canadian Press