By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A Bronx man who took a bullet in the thigh during a police shootout in Harlem early Sunday morning plans to sue the city for $20 million, court papers said.
Larry Garlick, 38, is the first person involved in the shootout — which left one man dead, likely from a police bullet — to file a claim related to the incident. The claim accuses the NYPD officers involved of negligence.
The victim's attorney, Bruce Baron, said Garlick was hit by a bullet fired by one of four NYPD officers who opened fire when responding to an armed scuffle at a block party at Lenox Avenue and 144th Street about 3 a.m. Sunday.
The officers present reportedly fired 46 rounds as a fight broke out between Luis Soto, 21, who was killed, and Angel Alvarez, 23, who remains in the Intensive Care Unit of Harlem Hospital after having survived a reported 21 bullet wounds.
Garlick is confined to his home with a bullet still lodged in his right leg because doctors could not remove it, Baron said.
The attorney claimed the officers present at the shootout engaged in "contagious shooting," and accused the police department of putting poorly trained officers on the streets of Harlem's 32nd Precinct.
Baron said authorities are guilty of "failing to recognize a known risk to human life posed by the discharging of firearms into a crowd of people," in a notice of claim filed Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
No one involved in the incident has been criminally charged yet by the Manhattan District Attorney and that office is still investigating.
When reached Wednesday afternoon, a spokesperson for the city's Law Department said they had just been served with Garlick's claim and it had not yet been reviewed.
