Shot agent was ‘lucky’
Random drive-by eyed in wounding of FBI man
The FBI agent shot in the shoulder during a wild, random gunfight in Brooklyn over the weekend was lucky to have escaped without a more serious wound, shaken witnesses said Sunday.
Clad in a red sweatshirt, the agent — identified by a law enforcement source as Christopher Harper — yelled out, “I’m shot! I’m shot!” when the bullet pierced his shoulder, according to Eldora Phillips, 68, who lives near the scene.
“I was inside my house and heard the gunshots. It must’ve been around 20. It was rapid fire. I knew they were gunshots right away,” Phillips said of the Saturday night gunfight in Canarsie.
Suspects Ronnel Watson, 31, and Hector Amissa, 29, were both taken into custody shortly after the shooting, police sources said. It wasn’t immediately clear if charges were filed.
Law enforcement sources say Harper was conducting surveillance near E. 92nd St. and Avenue N on Saturday afternoon when he was hit in the drive-by shooting.
There was “no reason for the shooting” and the gunfire may have been a random attack, one source said. The two suspects raced away in separate cars as the agent returned fire. One of the men was nabbed a short distance away on Remsen Ave., sources said.
That suspect drove a car — riddled with bullet holes and filled with shell casings — into an auto body shop to try to hide it before NYPD cops and K-9 dogs flooded the area.
The second suspect fled the scene in a BMW that had at least one window shot. Cops busted him at Kingsbrook Hospital after he showed up there with a gunshot wound.
Neighbor Tianna Gail recalled seeing the wounded FBI agent sitting on the ground, in visible pain.
“I heard him say, ‘I’m on the clock right now.’ They were bandaging his back left shoulder. He looked like he was fighting through it, but you could tell he was in pain. You could see it in his face,” Gail, 23, said. “I couldn’t see any blood, but an officer was saying the bullet was still in him,” she added.
Medics took the agent to Kings County Hospital, where he’s in stable condition. A second person believed to have been in the car with the agent was also taken to Brookdale University Medical Center with an unknown injury.