NEW YORK — New York City police officers were involved in three shootings in three counties in less than seven hours on Thursday, New York City police said. In the latest reported shooting involving police, a man was injured after he allegedly waved a gun near a crowd of people at a train station in the Bronx, police added.
Officers were called to the elevated subway station in West 238th Street there Broadway in the Kingsbridge area just before 8 p.m. Thursday, authorities said at a news conference. When police arrived, witnesses at the station pointed to the man who allegedly displayed a gun.
Officers approached the man and told him to drop the weapon, but the suspect did not follow instructions, police said. Instead, he started walking south on an overpass adjacent to the subway tracks, toward the next station on 231st Street.
Some officers followed the man onto the catwalk and continued to tell him to drop the gun, which he still allegedly refused to do, sometimes pointing the gun at officers. Another group of officers began approaching him from the other side as he approached the next station, police said.
When he pointed the gun again, an officer fired, the NYPD said. The man was hit by a bullet in the left hand, forcing him to drop the weapon.
Officers secured the weapon and assisted the man, who has not yet been identified, but police say they know him. He was taken to hospital where he is expected to survive.
Police said the gun (pictured below) was not a real gun, but an imitation or BB gun that closely resembles a real firearm.
An investigation is underway.
Prior to the incident, there were two other police shootings in New York on the same day. First, in Brooklyn, a 78-year-old man was fatally shot by officers responding to a mid-afternoon burglary call on Lewis Avenue in Bed-Stuy, police said.
Just hours later, a man acting erratically while armed with a knife outside a church in Queens was shot dead by NYPD officers after stabbing a security guard, according to the police. .