An off-duty NYPD officer managed to dodge a bullet before shooting a suspected car thief early Wednesday morning in Brooklyn. The uniformed officer said that it is a subject with an extensive criminal history, who ignored orders to drop the weapon, according to police and witnesses.
The officer came face to face with the thief as he stopped at a red light in Canarsie on his way home from the night shift. The man used his gun to hit the driver’s side window right at the corner of E. 87th St. and Foster Ave., shortly after 2 a.m. The officer drove through the intersection and stopped at the opposite corner.
Surveillance video shows the gunman walking toward the car as the officer rushed out of his vehicle. The car thief tried to open the driver’s side door and fired once, but the officer dodged the bullet, New York Police Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said at a news conference.
The police responded to the fire several times, wounding the attacker in the chest and arm, Harrison said. The gunman was rushed to Brookdale University Hospital with serious injuries.
The injured man, 28, was arrested last year in a vehicular homicide case in which he was allegedly driving drunk at more than 100 mph on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, authorities said.
The subject collided with two cars, including one in which two children, his mother and grandmother were traveling. The incident occurred on October 15, 2017, authorities said. The grandmother died from her injuries about six months later and eight other people were injured.
The subject fled the crash site, called his girlfriend and asked her to report the car he was driving as stolen, prosecutors said. He was arrested more than a year later, in April 2019 and released on a $ 250,000 bond.
The suspect’s extensive record includes 24 arrests, according to police.
The subject was unaware that he had attacked a police officer Thursday and the confrontation escalated within seconds. Two weapons were found at the scene, one would be covered in blood, along with a knife.
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