© Joe Marino/New York Daily NewsPolice officer is rushed into an ambulance en route to Lutheran Medical Center after he and another officer were shot at Fort Hamilton Parkway and 62 St. in Brooklyn on Thursday evening.
The first shooting, at 6:32 p.m. in the Bronxdale section of the Bronx, left an off-duty officer with a gunshot wound to the leg after he bravely fought back against a robbery crew that tried to rip off his car dealership. Exactly an hour later in Dyker Heights, in a gun battle on an N train, two officers and a straphanger were shot and wounded, and the gunman was killed by a police bullet.
The three officers -- all expected to recover -- were the first officers to be shot in 2013, following a year in which a dozen of the city's Finest were shot.
"As both of these incidents illustrate, the historic crime reductions that New Yorkers enjoy come at a price," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said late Thursday night in a press conference at Lutheran Medical Center, where the officers wounded in the Brooklyn shooting were treated.
"A dozen police officers were shot last year. And now three more, in the first three days of the new year, so thank God ... all of these officers will recover," Kelly added.
The first shooting occurred after a group of men tried to hold up Officer Juan Pichardo's car dealership on Boston Road, police and the officer's friends said.
While two suspects waited in a getaway car, two others went inside and pretended to be interested in buying a car - then at least one of them pulled a gun at the Auto Mall near Adee Ave., sources said.
© Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News Police and detectives are on the scene at a Boston Road auto dealership after an off-duty police officer was shot in the leg Thursday evening while foiling an attempted robbery.
Pichardo, 34 - a nine-year veteran assigned to the 41st Precinct in Hunts Point - tried to stop the robbery before one of the bandits squeezed off at least one shot, sources said.
"I heard two men arguing, angry at each other. Then I heard a gunshot," said Alicia Edwards, 18, who lives behind the car dealership. "Then the shouting stopped."
The round hit Pichardo in the leg - but the bleeding cop still managed to help a coworker hold down the gunman and take the pistol from his hand, sources said.
© Ken Murray/New York Daily NewsInjured police officer is aided after he was shot on the subway at Fort Hamilton and 62 St.
Charges against them were pending.
The wounded cop, a married father of three young children, was taken to Jacobi Medical Center and was expected to survive.
A subway passenger snapped this cell phone photo of the suspect on the ground at the Fort Hamilton Parkway station.
An hour later in Brooklyn, Officers Michael Levay and Lukasz Kozicki, both in plainclothes and riding on a Manhattan-bound N train, were shot after confronting a man they spotted walking between the train's cars, police said.
The officers approached the suspect inside the car as the train pulled into the station at Fort Hamilton Parkway and 62nd St. at 7:32 p.m., police said.
© Joe Marino/New York Daily NewsPolice cars wait outside Lutheran Medican Center in Brooklyn after two officers were brought in after being shot at an N train station.
Kozicki, 32, was hit three times: once in each of his upper thighs, and once in the groin. His partner was grazed in the back by a bullet.
The wounded cops returned fire, killing the gunman at the scene. He fell mortally wounded on the subway platform, as straphangers fled the car.
One straphanger suffered a graze wound to the leg and was expected to survive.
Both officers were taken to Lutheran Medical Center, where they were listed in stable condition.
With Thomas Tracy
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