BX. SHOCKER
Cops wound teen, shoot gun out of his hand
NYPD cops shot a teen vandal caught spraying graffiti in the Bronx, critically injuring him and blasting a pistol out of his hand after he opened fire on them early Sunday, police said.
“I just hope my son is all right — I just hope he recovers,” Patterson Nantwi, the father of the shot teen, told the Daily News. “He’s a teenager going through teenage things.”
A sergeant and two officers were patrolling in the South Bronx when they stopped two young men for spraying graffiti on a wall on Elton Ave. near 153rd St. about 12:35 a.m. on Sunday, police said.
One of the vandals escaped, but cops managed to catch the second suspect, 18-year-old Messiah Nantwi, who tussled with the arresting officer and allegedly pulled out a gun, letting off three shots, cops said.
The three cops, who were all in uniform, shot Messiah multiple times, according to police.
Cops recovered the .22-caliber gun they say Messiah used. It was blasted in half during the shootout, police said.
First responders rushed Messiah to Lincoln Hospital, where he is in critical but stable condition, police said. Charges against him were pending.
The three cops were taken to the hospital for evaluation but did not appear to be injured.
“I’ve been a single parent for 12 years — he’s been with me since he was 7 years old,” said Nantwi, 50, who was skeptical of the police account of what happened. “I’ve never seen him doing graffiti.”
A clerk who works next to the shooting scene said hooligans frequently spray-paint walls.
“We don’t see them doing it. Basically, they do it at nighttime,” said Jacob Eagoub, 61, whose family has run A&Z Jewelry and Electronics at that corner for more than 20 years. “I don’t bother them, and they don’t bother me,” he said of the vandals.
Nantwi’s father hadn’t seen his son since Friday night when he kicked him out of their Harlem apartment during a fight. “My son’s not a bad kid,” he said. “He’s finding his way, you know? Me and him got into it. I feel a little guilty because I told him to leave . . . and he didn’t come back. And I thought he got a hotel room, because he left with his girlfriend.”
Messiah didn’t graduate high school, but his father has been trying to persuade him to get a GED.
His mother is homeless. The teen recorded hip hop in a studio near where the shooting happened, his father said, and worked at a restaurant. He spent some time last year living in Los Angeles, working for a vegan food truck, before returning to his father’s place on Thanksgiving.
Messiah would occasionally ask his father about guns but didn’t own one as far his dad knew. “I told him, ‘Everybody is getting obsessed with these guns,’ ” the father recounted. “I said, ‘Messiah, please, you play around with a gun, you look for trouble.’ ”
Sunday’s shootout echoed a remarkable incident in October 2010 when hero cop Feris Jones shot the gun clean out of the hand of a robber sticking up a hair salon. Jones was off-duty and getting her hair done when she saved a room full of women from the trigger-happy robber.
“Tonight’s shooting underscores the dangers our brave cops face every day as they keep people safe,” NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan said at an early-morning news conference Sunday. “Whether they are stopping someone who is making graffiti or responding to a known shooting — there are too many guns on the streets of New York City.”
The second suspect is still on the loose, cops said.