By Kerry Burke
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Two police officers were shot and wounded in a bloody struggle with a gunman in the Bronx Wednesday night, authorities said.
The officers were responding to a call for a person with a gun about 8 p.m. near E. 187th St. and Beaumont Ave. in Belmont, sources said.
When they arrived, they found the gunman, chased and grabbed him. But as the suspect struggled to break free, he shot both officers, sources said.
A male officer was shot in the chest, while his female partner was hit in the side.
Both officers — assigned to patrol in the 48th Precinct — were taken to St. Barnabas Hospital and were expected to recover.
The suspect was also shot and was in serious condition, the sources said.
“Please pray for the recovery of the two officers who were shot in my neighborhood of Belmont,” U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres tweeted Wednesday night. “We must fully support the next mayor, @ericadamsfornyc, as he seeks to crush the epidemic of violence that has taken hold in the Bronx and elsewhere in the city.”
https://twitter.com/NYPDnews/status/1463717766070816771
The wild encounter came amid a troubling trend of gun violence in the Bronx.
Murders are up by nearly 29% in the Bronx, with 130 as of Sunday compared with 101 in the same time frame last year. Shootings have spiked by more than 30%, with 547 as of Sunday compared with 428 in the same timeframe in 2020.
That’s a sharp contrast with the city as a whole, which has seen a 1.2% decrease in homicides this year, and just a 2.2 % increase in shooting incidents.
The latest encounter erupted just an hour and a half after two men in a stolen Jeep ran over a police officer in Brooklyn, breaking his leg.
The driver and a passenger were traveling on E. 83rd St. and Farragut Road in Canarsie about 6:30 p.m. when officers with the 69th Precinct ran the vehicle’s plate and realized it was reported stolen, police said.
The cops tried to stop the Jeep, but the driver floored it, dragging one of the officers and breaking his leg.
The Jeep then sped north on E. 83rd St., and veered into a shared driveway between two buildings crashing into a gate. The driver and passenger ran off, and remained at large late Wednesday.
“There was a crash, and the car went into the gate,” said a 73-year-old woman who’s lived on the block for the past 26 years. “It was busier then the Belt Parkway back there.”
The officer went to Kings County Hospital in stable condition.
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