BROOKLYN, NY — The NYPD is investigating the chaos that unfolded after police opened fire at a subway station, leaving an officer, a suspect and two innocent bystanders shot in Brownsville.
It happened shortly after 3 p.m. Sunday at the L Train platform at Van Sinderen and Sutter avenues in Brownsville. It started when police say the two officers followed a 37-year-old man up the stairs who hadn’t paid his fare.
“The officers are asking him to stop. The male is refusing to stop at a certain point on the platform. The male, he mutters the words, ‘I’m going to kill you if you don’t stop following me,'” said NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.
That verbal threat became a physical one as the suspect pulled a knife from his pocket. Officers told the man to drop the weapon but the suspect told officers they would have to shoot him, Maddrey said.
The confrontation moved inside a train that had just pulled into the station and that’s where police opened fire after tasering the suspect didn’t work.
The bullets that flew inside the car and onto the platform struck the suspect and two passengers – a 26-year-old woman and a 49-year-old man – as well as a 40-year-old officer.
On Monday, the shot officer remained hospitalized at Brookdale University Hospital. It is unclear if the officer was hit by a bullet or fragment that came from his partner’s gun.
The 37-year-old suspect Derell Mickles remains in critical condition at Kings County Hospital.
Mickles, who is accused of evading the subway fare and allegedly pulling out a knife from his pocket, has been charged with attempted assault, theft of service, menacing, criminal possession, according to police.
The 49-year-old male bystander struck in the head is in critical condition and the 26-year-old woman, also a bystander, was grazed in the leg by a bullet and is stable.
An NYPD official estimated the suspect was about seven feet from the NYPD officers at the time they opened fire, well within their “zone of safety” of 21 feet.
Via ABC7NY