NEW YORK — A New Yorker who was hit by a stray police bullet when NYPD officers shot a man at a Brooklyn train station has undergone cranial surgery to reduce swelling from a bullet wound in his head, according to a relative.
Gregory Delpeche, 49, was riding the subway to work when the shooting occurred Sunday. Now, he’s sedated in a hospital as his loved ones rally around him while doctors attend to his grave injury.
“Right now he’s breathing through a tube,” Delpeche’s cousin, Greg Nougues, told The Associated Press in a phone call Tuesday as he was on his way to visit him in the hospital. He added that the family was in a “waiting game.”
Nougues said the prognosis is uncertain and that doctors had to open up his skull to operate on brain swelling. He said the family is looking for a lawyer.
At around 3 p.m. Sunday, two police officers noticed a man enter the station without paying. The officers followed the man to the elevated subway platform, but he refused orders to stop and muttered threats at the police, Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said at a news briefing later Sunday.
Police shot the man multiple times, but Delpeche and a 26-year-old woman were also hit, along with one of the officers. The woman was grazed by a bullet, and the officer, who was shot near his armpit, is expected to recover.
Gregory Delpeche’s name and the extent of his injuries were first reported by the Daily News.
“This is really messed up. Why are the cops shooting in the crowd?” Delpeche’s friend and neighbor Leighton Lee told the News.
A video from a bystander posted online after the shooting showed a chaotic scene, including upset passengers fleeing, police running to help the injured and the wounded officer suddenly realizing he had also been hit by a bullet. In one video, victims can be seen lying on the ground in two separate subway cars.
Nougues confirmed his cousin was shot in a separate car from the alleged fare evader. Police say that man, aged 37, is also in the hospital with gunshot wounds.
According to Maddrey, the man threatened the officers and they learned he had a knife. They fired two Tasers, but neither incapacitated him. He then moved toward the officers with the knife, and both officers fired multiple rounds, he said.
Separately, police are looking for a person who they say snatched the knife from the crime scene on Sunday soon after the shooting.
Police and transportation officials say there are more videos of what happened but haven’t released them.
Mayor Eric Adams said in his weekly press conference Tuesday that he feels for the innocent bystanders who had been shot, and that he visited the 26-year-old woman in the hospital and spoke with her mother.
“It’s heart-wrenching when an innocent person is the victim when action is taken,” Adams told reporters.
Adams said that he’s watched the videos and believes the officers responded appropriately.
“I saw the steps those police officers implemented,” Adams told reporters. “Over and over again, trying to reason with the perpetrator. And so some people said, ‘Well, you shouldn’t be enforcing fare evasion.’ No. This is not a city where any and everything goes.”
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AP investigative researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report.