By The newspaper
01 Dec 2023, 09:17 AM EST
A recently graduated, off-duty young police officer reportedly shot an allegedly drunk man yesterday during a dispute inside a furniture store in the Bronx (NYC).
The motive for the incident, which sparked panic and chaos on White Plains Road in the Wakefield section, was unknown after gunfire erupted around 3 p.m. Thursday.
The unidentified officer is 30 years old, just graduated from the academy and is assigned to the Bronx, he explained. ABCNews. It is unclear what he was doing in the store and whether he and the man who was shot knew each other.
The NYPD officer fired a single bullet at the man, hitting him in the left arm. Witnesses say that just before he was shot he seemed so drunk that he was having trouble standing upright.
“He was swaying a lot,” witness Ryan Willis said. “And because of the smell. “You know when a person was drinking.”
“During the dispute, the off-duty police officer discharged his weapon once, striking the man once in the left arm and the bullet grazed the man’s chest,” said Benjamin Gurley, Chief Deputy Chief of the Bronx District Patrol. of the New York police.
That unidentified man was taken to Jacobi Medical Center in stable condition. There are questions about how the officer’s gun was fired, whether there was a struggle and whether the officer felt his safety was at risk.
There were other customers in the store at the time and investigators initially got conflicting accounts of what happened. By reviewing the security cameras, detectives hope to have answers to clarify the case. No arrests have been announced.
In another case of gun violence, over the weekend, also in the Bronx, a 49-year-old man was shot to death in front of his wife after parking in a shopping center.