A Long Island 17-year-old who the authorities say shot a police officer three times in a fire exchange in a Brooklyn building on Sunday night has been charged with attempted murder of a police officer and criminal use of a weapon, The New York Times reports.
The officer and the suspect, who was also shot three times, were in stable condition.
The teenager, Elijah Foster-Bey, 17, of Port Washington, Nassau County, had been staying with an uncle in East New York for the last five months to commute more efficiently to his job as a bicycle messenger in Manhattan.
On Sunday night, Foster-Bey was riding a bicycle southbound on Bradford Street in East New York. As an unmarked police car approached him for reportedly riding his bicycle on the sidewalk, Foster-Bey ran into a three-story row house at 454 Bradford St., ignoring the officers’ orders to stop, police said. Three plainclothes officers jumped out of the car and followed him into the building.
Paul Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, told the Times that the plainclothes officers were members of the 75th Precinct’s anticrime unit and they had been investigating a series of robberies on bikes in the neighborhood.
On the second floor of the building, Foster-Bey turned and fired at least twice, Browne said. He ran up to the third floor and turned to shoot again as the officers fired back. Officer Richard Ramirez, 29, was struck twice in the right leg and once in the lower-right abdomen as he reached the top of the third-floor landing. His bullet-proof vest blocked the abdomen shot, police said. Foster-Bey fired six rounds until he ran out of bullets, then threw the gun down the steps, according to the police. Ramirez’s partner and a fourth officer subdued him and handcuffed him, the police said.
Ramirez was recovering at Kings County Hospital Center. The teenager was at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center.
Ellen Cross, the boy’s mother, said her son never had a gun or a criminal record. She said the 17-year-old had been previously issued four tickets for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk. According to the police, he also had one previous arrest, which was sealed.
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