3 Officers Are Wounded in 2 Shootings; a Gunman Is Killed
Michael Nagle for The New York Times
Two officers were shot at the
Fort Hamilton Parkway subway station in Brooklyn on Thursday, an hour
after an attempted robbery in the Bronx.
By RAVI SOMAIYA and WENDY RUDERMAN
Published: January 3, 2013
Three New York City police officers were shot Thursday night in two
separate encounters, including one at a Brooklyn subway station that
left a gunman dead.
In that shooting, just after 7:30 p.m., two plainclothes transit
officers, Michael Levay, 27, and Lukasz Kozicki, 32, saw a man moving
between cars on the Brooklyn-bound N train at Fort Hamilton Parkway
subway station in Brooklyn, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at
a news conference late Thursday.
The officers approached the man, removed their shields from under their
bulletproof vests, explained that moving between the cars was not
allowed, and asked him to accompany them off the train, Mr. Kelly said.
He moved as if to comply, the police said, but pulled a gun and shot
Officer Kozicki once in each thigh and in the groin, and Officer Levay
once in the back.
Officer Levay, whose vest prevented serious injury, according to Paul J.
Browne, the chief police spokesman, returned fire with seven bullets,
killing the man. The gunman, whose name was not immediately released,
landed with his feet on the platform and his body on the train, the
police said. He had at least five previous arrests, including one for
“assault with a knife,” Mr. Browne said. Both officers were in stable
condition Thursday night at Lutheran Medical Center. One bystander
received a graze wound to the leg, the police said.
Earlier, around 6:30 p.m., four men, one with a gun, approached a car
dealership on Boston Road in the Allerton section of the Bronx owned by
the family of Officer Juan Pichardo, 34, and announced a robbery, the
police said.
Mr. Pichardo, who was off duty, and another employee were held at
gunpoint while one of the men ransacked the premises, the police said.
Mr. Pichardo rushed at his assailant and was shot in the lower leg, the
police said, but despite the wound, he and the employee subdued the
gunman. The gunman and three accomplices, two waiting in a car outside,
were later arrested, the authorities said. Officer Pichardo was taken to
Jacobi Medical Center. His wounds were not considered life-threatening.
The shootings of the three police officers underscored a violent first
few days of the new year, prompting officers working the late shift
Thursday night at Police Headquarters to shake their heads.
“In recent weeks we’ve heard that what stops a bad guy with a gun is a
good guy with a gun,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Thursday night
at the news conference, held at Lutheran Medical Center. “But sometimes
the good guys get shot.” Mr. Bloomberg renewed his call for stronger gun
restrictions.
The shootings fanned an already boiling debate about gun control. The
gun used to shoot the off-duty officer in the Bronx was reported stolen
in North Carolina in late December; the subway assailant’s gun had been
purchased in Pennsylvania in 2011.
Thursday’s attacks followed two other police-involved shootings so far
this year. In one of those, on Wednesday, an officer shot and seriously
injured a 40-year-old man who was wielding a pair of scissors and
threatening a woman in a Brooklyn apartment.
In 2012, the police said, 11 New York City police officers were shot
while on duty, and one while off duty. None of the shootings were fatal.
In 2011, three officers were shot, and one died.
“This is another reminder of how hard we have to work on a nationwide
level to keep illegal guns out of New York City,” Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, said on Thursday night.
The exchange of gunfire in Brooklyn was the latest in a series of deadly
encounters at subway stations. In December, two men were pushed to
their deaths underneath subway trains. Suspects have been arrested in
both cases.
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