The response was instantaneous, according to a recording of police dispatch calls.
Some of the first officers to arrive were in street clothes, officials said. Three ran inside. More officers pulled up outside. The officers inside the store saw a man with a pistol raised, advancing toward them. They retreated out of the store.
Then everything went wrong.
Seven officers opened fire toward the store — a total of 42 shots within 11 seconds, police said.
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When the shooting ended, two men lay bleeding on the ground outside the store.
Neither was the robber.
They were brother officers, struck by friendly fire. One of them, a veteran detective, died from his wounds. A sergeant was struck nearby — “I’m shot,” he said into his radio. “Perp’s still in location.”
The man in the store was wounded and quickly arrested. The gun he had carried turned out to be fake, police said.
Those 11 seconds of confusion will be parsed in the days and weeks ahead, as police seek to learn how such a chain of events could occur and how a recurrence could someday be prevented.
Detective Brian Simonsen, 42, a 19-year veteran, was fatally shot in the chest, the police commissioner said. He was the first New York City police officer to be killed in the line of duty since July 2017.
The sergeant who was struck, Matthew Gorman, 34, underwent surgery for a gunshot wound to his thigh and was expected to recover. The robbery suspect was identified as Christopher Ransom, 27, of Brooklyn, a man with a history of prior arrests for minor crimes whom police were looking for in connection with another robbery of a cellphone store in January. He was shot eight times, police said, but details of his injuries were not immediately disclosed.
The detective was dressed in civilian clothing, police said. He was shot in the chest, police said, suggesting he was not wearing a vest, although those details were still unclear Wednesday morning.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.