NEW YORK — An innocent bystander was shot Monday as police took aim at a gunman in Brooklyn, but he told CBS New York’s Alice Gainer that he’s just relieved officers were able to stop the man.
Police ultimately shot and killed the man they were after. They say the gunman was running around firing off shots at two people after one tried to rob him.
Sixty-year-old Henry Massop says he was just outside doing work when he was shot twice.
“I was shot right in the belly side, and I was shot in the arm,” Massop said.
The bullet remains lodged in his right arm.
Home security video shows police chasing after and ultimately shooting and killing a 20-year-old on East 57th Street near Remsen Avenue in East Flatbush around 6 p.m. Monday.
Police say he had a gun and was chasing and firing off shots at 19-year-old Jeremiah Adams, who tried to rob him. Neither Adams nor an unidentified female who was with Adams were shot.
Officers repeatedly yelled for the gunman to stop.
Massop was at work at an auto shop across the street working on a car and reaching for a tool.
“So it sounds like this all happened so fast?” Gainer asked.
“Oh my god, it’s so fast. It’s so, so fast. I just leave the car to get a tool — pow, pow. I said, ‘What is this?’ It was so strange. I said, ‘What happened? Let me look around.’ Cops are all over, intense, like, two seconds,” Massop said.
Massop says he saw the officer and was shot before he noticed the man with the gun.
“It was burning,” he said. “I see the guy was running … with the gun up.”
The married father of two says once he saw that, he was relieved police got the gunman, even if it meant he was shot in the process.
“What are you feeling right now? Are you angry this happened?” Gainer asked.
“No, no, no. When I see the guy with the gun, I wasn’t angry no more. I was really impressed because the cop was so tight on the scene,” Massop said.
Massop thinks he may have been shot accidentally by a police officer, but an investigation will look at the bullets to determine which gun they came from.
Adams, the man the gunman was chasing, was taken into custody. No gun was found on him, but he was wanted for a crime in Brownsville earlier this month. He’s charged with robbing and shooting a man in a separate incident.
The unidentified woman he was with Monday is not in custody.
Police have not yet identified the gunman who was killed because they are still waiting to notify family.
- In:
- East Flatbush
- Brooklyn
