Upstate, downstate 1-man crime spree
Susp is finally nabbed at Gowanus Canal
A gunman who shot at cops upstate then held up a Brooklyn smoke shop early Monday was captured later in the day — after several people spotted him near a Gowanus supermarket and called 911, police sources said.
NYPD Officers arrested Joshua Stuart, 42, after several 911 callers spotted him near the Whole Foods on Third Ave. and Third St. in the late afternoon, sources said.
He was sitting on a park bench when he saw several cops looking for him and then bolted, sources said.
Stuart fled into a promenade area near the supermarket, jumped a fence, and ran on to the rocks of the Gowanus Canal, where police caught him, sources said.
The NYPD also called on a harbor unit boat to aid with the chase — in case Stuart tried to make a swim for it.
Stuart was armed, but he threw his gun away during the chase, sources said.
His clothes appeared wet as police and U.S. Marshals led him away from the pier near Whole Foods.
His arrest came just hours after his gunpoint robbery of a 29-year-old clerk at the Mist Tobacco Shop, on Third Ave. near 83rd St. in Bay Ridge, cops said.
Stuart allegedly approached the clerk and waved a firearm in his face about 8:30 a.m.
“He took $50 in singles,” the shaken clerk said.
The suspect also stole a credit card before taking off in a gray Honda Pilot.
He had stolen that car, which police later recovered, from an elderly couple upstate, sources said.
News of the Brooklyn robbery spread quickly Monday, alarming other shopkeepers in the area.
“My daughter was in here alone,” said Jimmy Assam, 45, from inside the Jim Candy Store on the same block as Mist Tobacco.
State police said Stuart was armed with a semiautomatic handgun and was considered “extremely dangerous.”
Police sources said his father grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and his grandparents and aunt still live in Kensington.
Cops and U.S. Marshals took him to the 68th Precinct stationhouse in Bay Ridge on Monday night.