In the span of just one hour, three police officers were injured in two different shooting incidents in Brooklyn and the Bronx Thursday night, said the NYPD. They are all expected to survive.
Around 6:30 p.m., an off-duty officer, Juan Pichardo, was working at his family’s car dealership in the Bronx when two men, one armed with a gun, attempted to rob the place.
When Pichardo tried to grab the gunman, he fired his weapon, hitting Pichardo in the right thigh, but, with the help of a dealership employee, he was able to wrestle the robber to the ground and disarm him.
The other robber escaped with two others that were waiting in a getaway car, but they were caught by police only a short distance away from the dealership at 183rd Street and Katonah Avenue.
The gunman was reportedly a wanted member of a Bronx robbery crew.
About an hour later, in Brooklyn, two plainclothes officers who were on patrol in a Manhattan-bound ‘N’ train approached a rider who had violated transit rules by moving between two cars and asked him for identification as the train neared the Fort Hamilton Parkway station at 62nd Street.
Appearing to reach for his wallet, the suspect pulled out a 9-millimeter gun and shot Officer Lukasz Kozicki, , 32, three times, once in each of his upper thighs and once in the groin.
Officer Lukasz Kozickim 27, who was shot in the back of his bulletproof vest, returned fire, hitting the gunman and killing him.
During the shooting, a bullet also grazed the leg of a passenger in the same subway car.
The two incidents occurred less than a week after the NYPD announced a record low of 1,353 shootings in the city in 2012.
According to the NYPD, 12 of those shootings last year were of police officers.
“As both of these incidents illustrate, the historic crime reductions that New Yorkers enjoy come at a price,” said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
