An argument over a seat on a city bus sparked a foot chase by police down a Jamaica, Queens, street and ended with a rookie officer in the hospital with a gunshot wound to the leg Wednesday afternoon, according to NYPD officials.
It began around 3:20 p.m. when the suspected gunman and another passenger began to quarrel over a seat on an eastbound MTA bus on Jamaica Avenue, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said.
As the argument escalated, the bus driver pulled over and flagged down two officers with the 103rd Precinct Field Training Unit.
As 22-year-old Officer Brett Boller, the son of Deputy Inspector Donald Boller, boarded the bus to find out what was going on, the suspect muscled his way off and fled down 161st Street with both officers giving chase.
Around midblock, in front of the Salvation Army Community Center, the injured officer caught up to the man and the two began to struggle again, Essig said. As they grappled, the suspect pulled a gun and shot the officer in the leg, the chief said.
As the officer fell to the pavement bleeding, his partner fired twice at the fleeing gunman, Essig said. It’s unknown if the assailant was hit, he added.
Cellphone video taken in the frantic aftermath of the shooting shows Boller, who graduated from the police academy last June, laying flat on his back in front of a chainlink fence. Officers crowd around the injured man, cutting his pants leg open to apply direct pressure to the wound.
“Somebody get a car!” one of the responding officers shouts as a group of onlookers gathers around.
Four cops lift the bleeding officer off the ground and carry him across the sidewalk as one of them yells, “Get him in the van!”
Sirens blare as police clear responding patrol cars from the street to allow the police van to rush the wounded rookie to Jamaica Hospital. He was in surgery Wednesday night.
“There was cops coming from everywhere. From all different directions.,” said Taryn Jefferies, 65, who works on the block.
Investigators tracked down surveillance video of the suspect ducking into a parking garage and shedding a black bubble jacket and orange hoodie before leaving the building in a white T-shirt.
He was still on the loose late Wednesday, said police, who offered a $10,000 reward for info leading to his arrest.
Boller graduated in the same academy class as an officer who was wounded on New Year’s Eve in Times Square by a machete-wielding Maine man who had recently converted to Islam, police say.
Three officers wounded in that attack were honored Wednesday morning by Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell.
“We began our day today by honoring three of our members who performed in a heroic manner, injured in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. And now, less than 10 hours later, we are back in a hospital with another officer injured, this time shot by another firearm on our streets,” Sewell said during a press conference at Jamaica Hospital.
Adams noted that the city signed a tentative labor contract with the Police Benevolent Association, after seven years without a formal agreement.
“In the middle of the day we signed a contract that signified how much respect we have for the men and women who protect the city,” the mayor said alongside Sewell. “During that contract signing, I stated that our offices run towards gunshots when others run away. That is what happened today.”
The mayor, who retired from the NYPD after more than 20 years with the rank of lieutenant, said that he spoke to the mother of the injured officer.
“The mom whispered in my ear. She stated, ‘I recalled at the graduation ceremony how you talked about your mother exhaled for the first time after you retired.’ She’s still holding her breath,” Adams said. “Her child was on our street to protect the children of our city and their families, and I can’t thank them enough.”
This is the second police officer to be shot this year.
Officer Paul Lee was wounded by a teenager around 3 a.m. on Jan. 17 near East 183rd Street and Prospect Avenue in Belmont, police said.
Lee and his partner, part of the 48th Precinct’s Public Safety Team, spotted the teen on the street in the early morning and pulled their patrol car over to question him, authorities said. The young man whipped out a .32-caliber gun and started firing, striking the windshield and Lee, who was sitting the passenger seat.
After a brief chase, the 16-year-old was apprehended. He was charged with attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
“There’s an over-proliferation of guns and too many people are willing to use (them),” the mayor said at Wednesday’s press conference. “When you could display a weapon over a dispute on the bus, that says a lot.”
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