Officer Shot 3 Times By Suspected Gang Member In Bed-Stuy: Cops

BED-STUY, BROOKLYN — An NYPD officer was shot three times Wednesday night when a man suspected of shooting into a car moments earlier opened fire on police near Saratoga Park, officials said.

The officer — hit in his bullet-proof vest, his leg and his buttocks — is at Kings County Hospital and expected to survive, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said at a press conference. The shooter, who was shot in the leg, is in police custody, he said.

"Thank God our officer will make a full recovery," Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the press conference. "...The individual who turned on our officers is clearly going to be brought to justice."

The wounded officer had been on patrol with another officer and an NYPD sergeant around 11:11 p.m. when they got a report about shots fired a few blocks away near Broadway and Madison Street, Shea said.

In that shooting, a man had run up to a white SUV and began firing at three men inside, police said. The SUV attempted to drive away but crashed. One of the men inside, a 28-year-old shot in the torso, was killed and another, the 21-year-old driver, is in critical condition, police said. The third man in the car was uninjured.

All three are known gang members with open weapons cases against them, Shea said.

About four minutes later, the officers, near Saratoga Park, spotted a man "walking briskly" and got out of their car to approach him, police said. The man was "blading his body," or turning it to the side as he walked, Shea said.

"Immediately, the male pulls a firearm, turns on the officers and begins to shoot," Shea said.

The two officers fired a total of 21 times at the suspect, hitting him in the leg. The man, a 26-year-old also known to police as a gang member, was taken into custody, the commissioner said.

Police are still confirming whether the man is the same shooter who fired into the SUV moments earlier.

"Due to the proximity of these two scenes and the short distance away, it is an extremely active investigation with multiple assets on the scene to narrow it down and draw conclusions...if these two incidents are related," Shea said.

The shooting is at least the sixth police-involved shooting in the borough in the last several months.

An officer was also hit in his bullet-proof vest when he was shot on Christmas Eve in Crown Heights by a man who had opened fire on a group of officers.