Police Officer Fires Gun At Uptown Project Party
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Witnesses and investigators gave conflicting accounts yesterday of the shooting by police of a 15-year-old at a party inside an Upper East Side housing project.
Police said patrol officers arrived at the Stanley Isaacs Houses on East 93rd Street around 1:15 a.m. after an anonymous caller reported that a fight had broken out and a man had a gun. Four officers and two sergeants ran into the host of the party in a hallway on the ninth floor, police said. They followed him back to a dimly lit apartment, where more than 50 people were gathered for a party.
As the officers were crossing a dark interior hallway, police said they encountered two men who were leaving the party. When one of the two men, later identified as a 15-year-old male, reached into his waistband and began to retreat, one of the sergeants discharged a round from his weapon. The bullet struck the teenager in the left thigh and he was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in stable condition, police said.
Yesterday, police described a chaotic scene following the shooting, with officers using flashlights to see and some guests fleeing the apartment. Police said they discovered an unloaded 9 mm pistol in the closet of a bedroom in the rear of the apartment.
However, guests at the party told a different story. They said the officer shot without warning and without identifying himself. Police said yesterday that they could not yet confirm the circumstances surrounding the officer’s decision to fire his weapon.
“It was pitch black when the cops came in, and they came in quietly, and they shot a bullet,” a guest at the party, Priscilla Rodriguez, 19, said.
Afterward, she said, an officer put a gun to her face and told her to shut up.
The police handcuffed the victim and interrogated him for at least 20 minutes on a bench outside the building before taking him to the hospital, Ms. Rodriguez added.
With no arrests as of last night, police said the investigation was ongoing. Police only identified the shooting officer as a 35-year-old sergeant who has served 14 years with the police department.