An off-duty NYPD officer is in critical condition after he was shot in Brooklyn during an apparent robbery Saturday night, police said.
\nThe officer \u2014 a 26-year-old father of two \u2014 was blasted in the head during a shootout at 472 Ruby Street in East New York around 7 p.m., police and sources said.
\nThe officer accompanied his brother for a car purchase he arranged on Facebook marketplace, when he was shot in what appears to be a botched holdup, police and sources said.
\nThe suspect pulled out his gun \u201calmost immediately,\u201d after the two arrived at the scene and \u201cannounced a robbery,\u201d Assistant Police Chief Michael Baldassano told reporters Saturday night.
\nThe off-duty officer drew his firearm as well and the two exchanged gunfire, police and sources told The Post.
\nOnce he was struck, his brother picked up his gun and fired additional shots at the fleeing suspect, sources said.
\nPolice are investigating area hospitals to see if the suspect was also struck, sources said.
\nThe officer\u2019s identity has not yet been released.
\nShocked witnesses described the horrifying scene
\n\u201cI saw a person wearing a black hoodie, black top and gray sweats shooting, like he was ducking in front of a car outside my house,\u201d neighbor Genesis, who called 911, told The Post. \u201cIt looked like he was shooting back and forth at someone.\u201d
\n\u201c[The suspect] kept shooting\u2026After the last shot, I saw him running towards McDonalds and I looked away,\u201d Genesis said.
\nShe said she didn\u2019t see anyone get struck but later \u201csaw someone get taken away in a stretcher,\u201d with a gunshot wound to the head.
\nFifteen shots in total were recorded by the department\u2019s ShotSpotter technology, sources said.
\nThe cop was transported to Brookdale Hospital and was in critical condition, police said.
\nDozens of fellow officers, many teary-eyed, lined the halls of the hospital Friday night.
\nHe has been a member of the force since 2017, police records show.
\nThe brother-in-law of the wounded officer\u2019s partner told The Post he was a \u201cfamily person,\u201d and father to two boys.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s a nice person. I met him a few times,\u201d Iffat Munir said.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s devastated right now,\u201d he said of the officer\u2019s partner.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s hanging in there,\u201d he told The Post.
\nThe suspect, described as a bearded man in his 20s, fled the scene in a dark vehicle with tinted windows, according to police sources. He was wearing a black sweatshirt and gray sweatpants, sources said.
\nNYPD helicopters were in the area looking for the suspect.
\n\u201cWe will catch the person responsible for this act,\u201d Mayor Eric Adams told reporters at the hospital Saturday night.
\n\u201cAn officer conducting a simple errand and a dangerous person pulled out a firearm. As we see so often in this city, too many illegal guns are in the hands of bad people and doing bad things,\u201d Adams said.
\n\u201cThis dangerous person must be removed off our streets,\u201d hizzoner added.
\nNYPD PBA president Pat Lynch blasted local lawmakers for living in a \u201cfantasy world\u201d with their light-on-crime policies that he said has led to \u201cdevastation\u201d in the city\u2019s streets.
\n\u201cYou want to see the reality? Look at the devastation those rounds caused to that young man\u2019s body. Listen to the cries of the wife, the father, the mother, their children,\u201d he said at hospital press conference.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s the reality. It\u2019s causing devastation. This has to end. We can\u2019t keep going to hospital emergency rooms and asking for prayers. Yes, prayers, but we need more. We need our legislators to sit down now, understand that they were wrong.\u201d
\nPolice are investigating whether the shooting was connected to other Facebook marketplace robberies, according to sources.<\/p>\n
Nypost<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1ashot<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An off-duty NYPD officer is in critical condition after he was shot in Brooklyn during an apparent robbery Saturday night, police said. The officer \u2014 a 26-year-old father of two \u2014 was blasted in the head during a shootout at 472 Ruby Street in East New York around 7 p.m., police and sources said. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[1452,1697,1997],"class_list":["post-5302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-during","tag-off","tag-officer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5304,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302\/revisions\/5304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}