Hospital shooting suspect captured
Joshua Stuart’s arrest followed NYPD report that he robbed store employee in Brooklyn
The man wanted for firing a gun in Ellenville Regional Hospital, shooting at police officers nearby and then robbing a store employee in Brooklyn has been captured, the New York Police Department said Monday evening.
“Joshua Stuart has been apprehended and is in police custody,” the NYPD said in a tweet about 6:30 p.m. Monday. Details of his arrest were not immediately available.
The report of his arrest came some 10 hours after the Brooklyn robbery. In that case, the NYPD said, Stuart entered a store at 8313 Third Ave. about 8:37 a.m. Monday, approached a 29-year-old male employee, displayed a gun and took the employee’s wallet, which contained $50 and a credit card. He then fled in a gray 2005 Honda Pilot, police said.
The store employee was not injured, the NYPD said.
Stuart, 42, initially was wanted for firing a gun in the emergency department at Ellenville Regional Hospital about 1 a.m. Friday — an incident in which no one was struck.
State police said he fled the scene after the shooting in a white Dodge Ram and that when New York City Depart-
ment of Environmental Protection police confronted a man near the truck in Napanoch, he fired four to five shots from a semiautomatic pistol. Police did not report anyone being struck by that gunfire, and they did not, at the time, identify
Stuart as the triggerman in the incident.
The man fled into the woods after firing the shots, police said. As a result, the nearby Vernooy Kill State Forest was closed Saturday and remained closed Sunday amid the search for Stuart.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation reopened the forest to the public on Monday in the wake of
weekend reports that Stuart had been spotted in Brooklyn.
The Freeman’s online archive shows a November 2016 arrest of Joshua K. Stuart, 40, of Kerhonkson, for an armed robbery three months earlier at a pharmacy in Kerhonkson. Police said at the time that he wore a mask, held a pharmacist at gunpoint and demanded prescription medications and money.