The 68-year-old veteran who was fatally shot by police Friday after he allegedly lunged at officers with a knife was suffering from cancer but had not seemed suicidal, his best friend said.

George Kenny said Vincent L. Young was a computer guru and a loner who did not have any family living nearby. Kenny said he couldn't have foreseen Friday's encounter in the emergency room lobby at the Bay Pines VA Medical Center.

"I spoke to him two days ago before the incident happened," Kenny said while sitting on his motorized wheelchair. "There was not any type of emotions that would lead me to believe he was suicidal. There was no emotion (suggesting) he was about to do something sporadic. He seemed to be the happy-go-lucky person he always was."

Authorities say Young, who lived in a mobile home at the Harbor Lights Club retirement community, entered the emergency room lobby of the hospital in west-central Pinellas County around 5 p.m. and told someone he had a bomb. When VA officers arrived, they determined him to be an imminent threat.

"The police officers from the facility arrived, confronted the individual, at which point the individual brandished a knife and lunged at the officers," FBI spokesman Dave Couvertier said.

Doctors tried to save Young, but he later died.

Authorities inspected a backpack Vincent was carrying and found a PVC pipe that looked like a pipe bomb. That prompted an evacuation of parts of the first floor of the center while bomb experts inspected the pipe.

But the experts determined it was a "hoax device," Couvertier said.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, other neighbors of Young said he had lost possibly 100 pounds over the previous seven months and was down to about 250 pounds. hey said Young was quick to help others with their computers and his home looked like an electronic repair shop.