NYPD detective, children shot in separate Brooklyn shootings over holiday weekend
A New York City police detective and four children were among those wounded in separate Brooklyn shootings over a violent Fourth of July holiday weekend.
New York Police Department Detective Robert Karroll of the Sex Offender Monitoring Unit was shot in the back of his ballistic vest during an encounter with an armed 18-year-old in Crown Heights early Sunday morning, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed at a news conference hours later.
Karroll was taken to Kings County Hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. A second officer suffered contusions to the face and shoulder during the incident.
Detectives' Endowment Association President Scott Munro denounced the spate of violence.
"This has to stop," he said at a Sunday morning news conference. "Three weeks ago we had a detective shot – in the same hospital. This has the stop. Our members are out there day and night hours and hours protecting the people of the city of New York doing a job that they took an oath to take and they need to be respected and thank God this detective is going home."
He sighed relief that "we're not planning a funeral today."
Tisch said officers assigned to a mobile field force detail were parked in an unmarked police vehicle near Nostrand Avenue and St. Johns Place around 4:14 a.m. ET when a person approached the car.
"Given the lack of body-worn camera in this incident, the circumstances of the approach are still unclear," Tisch said, adding the shooting happened "quickly and unexpectedly."
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That shooting came hours after four children were injured in Coney Island, where at least eight people were shot.
The victims included two men, two women and four children, ages 14, 12, 7 and 6. All were taken to hospitals. Seven were listed in stable condition, while a 21-year-old woman was in critical condition, police said.
In the shooting of the officers, Tisch said officers got out of the vehicle and tried to engage the armed suspect before three officers fired their weapons. The suspect was not struck, she said. The police vehicle had ballistic damage, including bullet holes in the front and rear windshields and on the passenger side.
After a foot chase, the suspect was apprehended several blocks away near Rogers Avenue and Union Street. Tisch said he resisted arrest and refused to be handcuffed before officers deployed a taser and took him into custody. A SAR 9mm firearm was recovered.
"I'm relieved that the officer, Detective Robert Karroll, was wearing a bulletproof vest and was not seriously injured as a result of it," New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at the news conference, relieved at the survival of "a husband and father of three children."
Tisch said the officers had been reassigned to the area shortly before midnight as part of the department’s Fourth of July violence reduction plan targeting ongoing crew violence.
Investigators were canvassing nearby businesses for surveillance footage because there was no body-camera video of the shooting itself.
Reuters contributed to this report.