Two NYPD officers responding to a domestic violence call suffered non-life-threatening gunshot wounds in a confrontation with an ex-convict in Brooklyn on Tuesday afternoon, police said.
A 911 call from a mother who said she was being attacked by her adult son summoned the officers to an apartment on Bergen Street near Saratoga Avenue in Brownsville just after 3 p.m., according to cops.
“It’s always an argument between mother and her son,” said neighbor Nova Fuller. “He screamed, ‘Remember what you said to me yesterday? I am not going back to jail!’”
The mother said she suffered a head injury in the assault, according to police. The two officers confronted Melvin Butler, 39, and told him he was under arrest.
Butler refused the cops’ instructions to put his hands behind his back and a “violent struggle” broke out, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a news conference Tuesday evening.
He added that body-worn camera footage showed Butler struggling with the officers on the ground. “And then you hear an officer state, ‘He has my gun,’ and then shots are fired,” the chief said.
One of the officers was shot in the left hand and the other in the left thigh, police said.
At least one of the cops returned fire, striking Butler in the stomach and leg, said cops.
Other first responders were also at the scene. “A cop came out of the building holding his right hand,” said neighbor Andre Garvin. “He was holding his hand with something wrapping it as he rushed to the EMT.”
Both the officers were taken to Kings County Hospital, where they were reported in stable condition. Butler was taken to the same hospital, where he was listed in critical but stable condition, police said.
Butler’s criminal record includes a February 2023 charge in a domestic violence incident, police said.
He spent 15 years in prison for a 2004 attempted-murder charge and was wearing an ankle monitoring bracelet during the shooting, police and sources said.
One of the injured officers has been with the NYPD for more than nine years, and the other has been with the department for 16 years, said Police Commissioner Edward Caban. Their names were not released.
A domestic violence incident in Harlem in January 2022 took the lives of two police officers, Wilbert Mora and Jason Rivera. The suspect in that case was fatally shot by a third officer.
Mayor Eric Adams saw echoes of Mora’s and Rivera’s deaths in the shooting on Tuesday.
“Today we could’ve had a similar tragedy,” Adams said at a news conference.
“Because of the swift actions of the two police officers who were involved and the responding officers, those officers will be going home.”
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