April 12 (UPI) — New York City police were scouring subway tunnels Tuesday afternoon in the hunt for a gunman who opened fire at a Brooklyn station during the morning commute.
Some 16 people were injured — 10 of them wounded by gunfire — when the man popped a smoke grenade about 8:24 a.m. and started firing from inside at train at the 36th Street and Fourth Avenue station.
People on the train and on the train platform at the station, which serves the D, N and R lines that pass through the Sunset Park neighborhood, were shot. The gunman got away.
“This person is dangerous. We’re asking individuals to be very vigilant and alert,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a briefing Tuesday afternoon.
“No more mass shootings. No more disrupting lives. No more creating heartbreak for people who are trying to live their lives as normal New Yorkers,” she added. “It has to end and it ends now.
“We are sick and tired of reading about crimes. … It has to stop.”
Five victims’ injuries were critical.
The gunman was described as a heavy-set Black man wearing a green vest, and blue and gray clothing that resembled a transit uniform.
A senior law enforcement official told The New York Times that the search for the gunman was made more difficult by the fact that none of the security cameras inside the subway station were operational at the time of the shooting. Police said they were methodically looking into subway tunnels
“This is not being investigated as an act of terrorism at the present time,” New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said, adding that there were no explosives on subway trains.
Meanwhile, WABC-TV reported at least one person was also shot at a different subway station in Greenwood Heights.
Gun violence has been on the rise in New York City this year. In early April, there had been almost 300 shootings in the city, up from 260 by this point a year ago, The New York Times reported.
