© Joe Marino/New York Daily News
Police 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.
New York - Three cops were shot Thursday night in two separate incidents an hour apart in the Bronx and Brooklyn, police said.
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.
Comment: Forget single digit food inflation, we'll soon be seeing triple-digit inflation on supermarket shelves. National food stores are empty and last year's particularly atrocious weather all over the globe, combined with years of weather extremes prior to that, have brought civilization to the brink.