Police officers responding to reports of two robberies in Queens on Tuesday fatally shot an armed man after he shot one of the officers in the leg during an exchange of gunfire that left a bystander wounded as well, officials said.
The injured officer, Rich Wong, was taken to Jamaica Hospital for treatment and was expected to recover, officials said. The man shot by the officers, Gary Worthy, 57, of Jamaica, Queens, was pronounced dead shortly after Officer Wong shot him, officials said.
The bystander, a 26-year-old woman whose name was not released, was also expected to recover, officials said. It was unclear who had fired the shot that hit her during what witnesses described as a chaotic scene in busy commercial area in Jamaica.
The shooting, coming a day after a 51-year-old man was charged with killing three people in a series of random stabbings in Manhattan, prompted Mayor Eric Adams to express relief over the officer’s expected recovery mixed with outrage over how he had come to be shot.
“We are grateful tonight,” Mr. Adams said at a news conference at Jamaica Hospital where he and police leaders discussed the shooting. “But we are also angry. We are angry because we have witnessed in two days a criminal justice system that is failing New Yorkers.”
Mr. Worthy was released from prison on parole in November 2021 after serving 11 years on charges of attempted criminal possession of a weapon, criminal possession of a controlled substance and burglary, according to state corrections department records.
Joseph Kenny, the Police Department’s chief of detectives, said at the news conference that Mr. Worthy was on a lifetime parole term for gun possession and that he had been arrested seven times since leaving prison three years ago.
His most recent arrest, Chief Kenny said, was last week, when he was charged with drug possession and resisting arrest. Mr. Worthy pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released without having to post cash bail, court records show.
Chief Kenny provided the following account of the events surrounding the shooting:
At about 5:30 p.m., Mr. Worthy entered a bodega on Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, intimidated workers and customers by firing one shot from a black revolver, demanded money and then fled.
About an hour later, Officer Wong and a partner were searching for the man involved in the bodega robbery when a person flagged them down near Jamaica Avenue and 160th Street, pointed out Mr. Worthy and said he had just robbed a nearby smoke shop.
The officers confronted Mr. Worthy a few minutes later. He did not stop as they asked and instead ran off down Jamaica with a gun in his hand.
The officers ordered him to drop the gun, and he refused. He fired one shot at Officer Wong, striking him in the thigh. Officer Wong returned fire, hitting Mr. Worthy once in the face.
Harry Jaikarran said he had been just standing steps away from Mr. Worthy when the gunfire erupted. He said the officers had fired five rounds.
“I feel sad about it, but you have to take the law very strictly,” Mr. Jaikarran said. “The law has to be the law.”
“Forty-five years in America, and I’ve never heard shots like this,” he added. “I was scared.”
Shoppers inside the Jamaica Center mall were told that the building was “on lockdown” and were kept inside for about an hour and a half, said Shaptorshi Ghani, 18, who was shopping at the Burlington Coat Factory store with her mother.
Natasha Morales, who operates the Make Me Over Beauty Truck, a mobile salon that she parks in the neighborhood, was in her vehicle at 162nd Street and Jamaica Avenue when she heard gunshots.
Afraid to leave the truck, she watched the through the windshield as people scattered and police officers swarmed the area. She heard helicopters hovering overhead.
“We do know that there are a lot of police officers on Jamaica Avenue, which, for the most part, makes us feel very safe,” Ms. Morales said. But as the owner of a small business in the area, she added, the shooting “makes us very concerned, very worried.”
The post N.Y.P.D. Fatally Shoots Man as Gunfire Also Wounds Officer appeared first on New York Times.
