A man has been arraigned for the killing of a prison inmate notorious for a 1986 gun battle during which he shot and wounded six New York City police officers in the South Bronx.

The victim, Larry Davis, died after he was stabbed during a prison yard fight at Shawangunk Correctional Facility upstate, officials from the State Department of Correctional Services said.

His alleged attacker, identified by officials as Luis Rosado, was being charged with the killing, which officials said took place at 7 p.m. last night during a recreational period in the prison’s B block yard. The three prison guards stationed in the yard with 22 inmates, including Rosado and Davis, said they saw Rosado assaulting Davis with a 9-inch metal shank, according to officials.

Prison guards helped Davis into a building and called an ambulance, according to officials. He was treated in the ambulance on his way to St. Luke’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:46 p.m. with multiple wounds to his head, chest, arms, back, and legs, officials said.

Davis had been imprisoned for the 1986 murder of a suspected drug dealer, the sixth he had been accused of killing in the 1980s. But he was better known for a confrontation with police officers in 1986.

In that incident, police had raided a building searching for Davis in the shooting deaths of four suspected drug dealers several weeks earlier. As police entered the apartment where Davis was staying, a gun battle broke out, leaving six of the nine officers involved wounded.

Davis was acquitted on the charges of attempted murder of a police officer, however, and convicted instead on weapons possession charges, prompting uproar among police officers. One of the officers involved in the shootout was paralyzed and was forced to retire.

Mayor Koch, who had driven up to the Bronx on the day of the raid and stood outside during the shooting, said he was “not weeping about his death.”

“If I said I was, I’d be lying,” Mr. Koch said.

“I never understood how the Bronx jury was able to come to the conclusion that he was not guilty of seeking to take the lives of six police officers,” he added.

Davis’s lawyers in the police shooting case were William Kunstler, the author of My Life of a Radical Lawyer whose clients ranged from Martin Luther King Jr. to Joseph Bonanno, and Lynne Stewart, who was later charged with aiding and abetting terrorism. During the trial, they argued that Davis had been targeted because he had information about police corruption, although they never presented evidence to support the allegations.

Davis had been serving a 30 years-to-life sentence for multiple counts of murder and weapons charges. He would have been eligible for parole in 2016, officials said, noting that he had “an extensive disciplinary history during his incarceration.”

State police investigators were at the prison today interviewing inmates and collecting evidence, and a spokesman said no motive had been determined.

They said Rosado, who was serving 25 years to life for multiple counts of murder, assault, and attempted assault, had an “extensive violent disciplinary history.” He had been eligible for parole in 2007, but was denied, and was next eligible for parole in 2009.