When officers shot a man wielding a knife on a platform in Brooklyn, an officer and two bystanders were also hit, the police said. One bystander was in critical condition.
A late-summer afternoon at an elevated subway station in Brooklyn exploded in chaos on Sunday as a police officer, a disturbed man armed with a knife and two bystanders were struck by police gunfire, the police said.
The officer was struck below his armpit and was in stable condition on Sunday night, the police said. The man with the knife was struck several times and was also in stable condition. A 49-year-old male bystander was struck in the head and was in critical condition. A 26-year-old woman, also a bystander, was grazed by a bullet and was stable.
The shooting occurred just after 3 p.m. at the Sutter Avenue stop on the border of East New York and Brownsville.
Two officers saw a man enter the station without paying and followed him up the stairs, said Chief Jeffrey B. Maddrey at a news conference on Sunday evening.
“The officers are asking him to take his hands out of his pockets,” Chief Maddrey said. “They become aware that he has a knife in his pocket. The male basically challenges the officers: ‘No, you’re going to have to shoot me.’”
A Manhattan-bound L train entered the station, and the man darted inside an open door. The two officers followed and fired their Tasers, but neither device was effective in subduing the man, Chief Maddrey said.
The man returned to the platform. “He’s advancing on one of the officers with his knife,” and both officers fired their handguns, Chief Maddrey said. The man went down, and the fallout of the shooting quickly revealed itself. One officer and two bystanders had also been struck.
“I don’t like to use that term ‘friendly fire,’ but absolutely we believe at this time that our officers were the only ones who discharged weapons,” Chief Maddrey said. “Everyone that was struck this afternoon, we believe, was by our officers.”
The newly appointed interim police commissioner, Thomas Donlon spoke briefly to reporters. It was Mr. Donlon’s first emergency response since he was appointed three days earlier, after the resignation of Commissioner Edward A. Caban, whose phone was recently seized in a federal investigation with a scope that remains unclear.
“It’s a dangerous job, and today is another reminder of that,” Mr. Donlon said. “Right now we are grateful that our officer will be OK.”
Mayor Eric Adams also briefly addressed reporters, citing the danger posed by the man with the knife, “a person with over 20 arrests, a real career criminal.”
The daytime shooting rattled neighbors who regularly use the Sutter Avenue subway stop. Arlene Alfred, 74, was passing the station when she heard the booming shots. “Like echoes,” she said. “The noise, with the train coming in, with the gunshots.”
Ms. Alfred lives a block away and has lived in Brownsville for 32 years.
“Anything could happen, any time, any day,” she said. “I’m always going up and down those stairs. I said to myself, Thank you, Jesus, I wasn’t in the train.”
Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.
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