Pages

September 05, 2015

Cops fire 84 shots at robbery suspect, hit him once: police

A gun-toting Brooklyn bandit dodged more than 80 police bullets early Friday in a wild street shootout that began with a botched armed robbery and ended with his arrest, officials said.
Oft-apprehended Jerrol Harris, 27, was busted around 1:10 a.m. when a single bullet — out of 84 fired at him — pierced his calf to end a blocks-long police pursuit through Bushwick, cops said.
The running gun battle came to a head when Harris opened fire with a stolen .45-caliber pistol, discharging at least six shots at two cops using their parked patrol car to cut off his escape route.
“He fired at them, and they fired back,” said NYPD Deputy Commissioner Stephen Davis. “That’s when he was hit.”
A witness said Harris collapsed in the street once he was finally wounded, with a black handgun and a small pile of spent bullet shells alongside him.
The crippling gunshot came in the second of two firefights with cops while Harris was on the run after shooting a Brooklyn man during a robbery try, police said.
A half-dozen cops fired on the fleeing suspect, who squeezed off a half-dozen rounds in return from his black Taurus Millennium pistol. No police officers were wounded.
Harris was nabbed by cops in part because of his red pants, police said.
Harris’ criminal past includes a rap sheet dating to 2003, with arrests in Louisiana and New York. He is currently on probation on a robbery charge down south, said Jefferson Parish prosecutor David Wolff.
The bizarre late-night battle began when Leon Faison, 52, was loading his SUV in the darkness outside his Madison St. home before a family trip, police said.
The burly, 6-foot-5 Faison popped the rear hatch of the vehicle and found Harris trying to steal items already packed in the SUV. The Brooklyn man then shot Faison in the arm and bolted, cops said.
The bleeding big man gave chase, spotting a pair of cops along the way.
“I got shot,” said Faison, who provided the duo with a description that included the suspect’s bright pants.
Harris was spotted running about eight blocks from the robbery scene, and the suspect soon spied the cops, too.
“He then gets behind a parked car and he starts to shoot at the cops,” said Davis. “They shoot at him.”
Four officers at the scene fired 52 shots, while Harris pumped one bullet into an unmarked police car and took off again, Davis said.
But the suspect found his way blocked by the patrol car parked in the middle of Broadway, with two police officers waiting with the vehicle.
Officers Wanda Crooks and Alem-Tsehay Clarke both emptied their 16-shot weapons, with one of the two taking Harris down, police said. The suspect was listed in stable condition at Kings County Hospital.
The NYPD will investigate the shooting, but Davis suggested police acted properly despite all the shots fired.
“You have a running gun battle here. There are a lot of cops involved and it takes places in several different locations. It’s not as if everything was stationary,” Davis said.
The wounded suspect had four robbery arrests from 2003 to 2006, along with busts for gun possession in 2011 and drug possession a year later, cops said.
His Louisiana rap sheet included a drug conviction and the robbery arrest that landed him on parole.

No comments:

Post a Comment