MetroTech Shooter Was Attacked Before Firing Gun, Cops Say

DOWNTOWN, BROOKLYN — The man who shot a gun inside one of Downtown Brooklyn's crowded subway stations last week had been attacked before firing the gun, police said.

Police said over the weekend that the man who fired a gun in Jay Street/MetroTech station on Friday afternoon, shutting down the crowded stop for hours, had been attacked by a group of people just moments before. The man fired a round from the gun during the attack and then ran away, police said. Nobody was hurt during the shooting.

Cops took five people into custody about an hour after the incident, which happened around 12:30 p.m Friday, saying they were each going to be questioned about what happened.

They are now looking for four other people who they think were with the shooter. The four people, caught on surveillance video leaving the station, are also wanted for questioning, police said.

The shooting is the second daylight shooting in the MetroTech Center area in the past few weeks.

Two weeks before, someone shot a gun just a few blocks away at 5 MetroTech Center.

In that shooting, a hooded man fired a gun in the street and hit a 27-year-old man in the buttocks just after 12:30 p.m., police said. Police swarmed the neighborhood to look for the shooter, who they originally thought was a 60-year-old man they took into custody.

But that man was later released after cops discovered surveillance video of the shooting. They are still looking for the shooter, who ditched his gun in a trash can near the building.

That daylight shooting had at least one nearby building put on lockdown and also led to a car accident as cops rushed to the scene. Police rushing to MetroTech got into a car accident in Clinton Hill on their way, hitting a civilian's car at Dekalb and Clinton avenues and flipping the civilian's car onto its side. The officers and the person in the other car were both hurt in the crash with non-life threatening injuries.

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM, on Twitter @NYPDTips. All calls are strictly confidential.