Hours later, the NYPD has no record of gunfire in Bx., say officer used batons

As his side mirror and rear windshield exploded, a young Bronx man hit the gas and fled what he and his girlfriend described as a barrage of NYPD bullets fired at them as they tried to escape a traffic stop.

They made a clean getaway. But when Derrick Hamlin, 22, and girlfriend Torrie Wilson, 27, tried to surrender to police the next morning, what they found out shocked them.

They weren’t wanted by the police, and the officers who tried to stop them never reported the chaotic encounter.

Now, that March 3 incident and the officers’ actions are the subject of an internal police probe and a possible lawsuit.

“I was thinking maybe they were going to be looking for my car. Maybe they were going to come and question us or something,” Wilson said. “I know this wasn’t a dream. This really happened. I still have the bullet holes in back of my car, so I don’t know what was going on.”

The NYPD insists those holes weren’t made by bullets.

Rather, police sources tell the

Daily News, the damage was done by a police officer’s baton. “Shots were not fired,” said Sgt. Jessica McRorie, an NYPD spokeswoman.

But the cops involved are likely still in trouble because they didn’t report their pursuit over their police radio, and never told their supervisor what happened, said police sources. “The incident is under internal review,” McRorie said.

Hamlin said he knew he was courting trouble with the cops just by putting his BMW 535 xDrive on the road that night. “We didn’t have any insurance so the registration was suspended,” he said.

The incident happened around 9:30 p.m., after Hamlin and Wilson dropped off Wilson’s 7-yearold daughter with her grandmother, and drove off to get some sweet chili salmon at a Caribbean restaurant.

Hamlin, who was driving, had just made a left turn near Bronx Blvd. in Olinville when a marked police vehicle got behind him and pulled him over.

“I didn’t want to lose the car, to get the car taken away,” Hamlin said. “So I just panicked and just drove off.”

He made it a few blocks, but got caught in traffic near E. 219th St. and White Plains Road.

The officers caught up, stepped out with their guns, and ordered the couple out of the car. Hamlin and Wilson are Black, and Hamlin said all the cops they saw were white.

“I didn’t know what to do. I was scared,” he said. “I tried to drive off again, and I got stuck. There was a red light, and there was a car in front of me.”

Wilson said she tried to get out of the car. She got an arm and leg out — but amid all the excitement, she didn’t realize her seat belt was