Allentown man ID’D as shooter in N.Y. subway gun battle

NEW YORK — Two police officers shot and wounded during a gun battle on a New York City subway train were released from the hospital Friday, as authorities identified the man who opened fire and was later killed.

Police said Peter Jourdan, 37, of Allentown, Pa., passed between subway cars while the train was moving, which is illegal, shortly before 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

As the train pulled into the Brooklyn station, plainclothes officers Michael Levay and Lukasz Kozicki asked Jourdan for his identification, and instead he pulled out a handgun and opened fire, police said.

Kozicki was struck three times and Levay had a graze wound to his back but was able to return fire, killing Jourdan, police said. A passenger also suffered a graze wound in the chaos, while others ran for cover on the platform when the gunfire erupted, police said.

There were no other injuries.

Jourdan had been arrested at least seven other times, including once in Los Angeles for bringing a gun to court.

Jourdan’s sister told the New York Daily News on Saturday that her brother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

Natalie Jourdan and other family members gathered in Brooklyn on Saturday. They said Jourdan made at least a dozen trips to jails and hospitals but was routinely sent back to the streets.

She said her brother should not have been allowed to buy a handgun.

Both Levay, 27, and Kozicki, 32, were released from the hospital Friday.

The subway shooting was the second of two Thursday involving police officers.

Off-duty Police Officer Juan Pichardo was shot in the thigh at his family’s Bronx car dealership during a robbery at about 6:30 p.m.

Pichardo was working off-duty at the car dealer- ship when two men, one armed with a handgun, entered while two other men waited outside in a getaway car, Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

After the two feigned interest in buying a car, one of them pulled out a handgun and ordered Pichardo and an employee onto the floor in a back office and started to ransack the place.

Pichardo grabbed gunman Jeffrey Okine, who fired and struck the officer in the thigh, police said. Although wounded, Pichardo and the other employee wrestled the gunman to the ground and disarmed him. The accomplice, Tyquez Harrell, fled in the getaway car with the two others, Marquis Daniels and Rayshaun Jones, but they were stopped a short distance away and arrested, police said.

The four men were arrested on charges of attempted murder, robbery and assault. They were in custody and unavailable for comment, and it wasn’t clear if they had attorneys.

A person who answered the phone at the address listed for Okine said he hadn’t heard about the charges. There were no listed phone numbers for the other three.