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Police Shoot Two Men During Inwood Car Stop, NYPD Says

By Carla Zanoni | November 23, 2011 7:04am | Updated on November 23, 2011 9:41am

INWOOD — Police shot two men after being threatened with a gun while conducting a car search in Inwood late Tuesday night, police said. 

Cops said they fired when at least one of four passengers in the car pointed a gun after the vehicle was stopped on Cooper Street, between West 204th and 207th streets, shortly after 10 p.m.

The black Honda Accord had been stopped because police believed it was carrying robbery suspects, an NYPD source said. The gun was pulled when one of the men was asked to step out of the car.

Officers recovered four firearms from the scene.

According to police, one man was shot in the groin and taken to Harlem Hospital. Another suffered a graze to the shoulder and was treated at the scene. The other passengers were arrested.

''I heard car tires screeching around 10 p.m. and then a lot of cursing and yelling," said a man who gave his name as Jay.

"I just thought, 'Oh man, it's New York.' And then suddenly 'bam, bam, bam.''  

''When I came to the windows there were two guys lying on their stomachs with their hands cuffed. Another guy seemed to be seriously injured lying further down on the sidewalk. He yelled each time they moved him.''

Nobody had been charged as of early Wednesday.

No officers were injured, police said.

The NYPD source said at least one NYPD officer and one Drug Enforcement Agency officer were involved. The NYPD officer fired just one shot, but the source couldn't say how many the DEA agent fired.

An Inwood resident, who asked to have his name withheld, said he heard the gun shots go off just after 10 p.m. and came outside to see what was happening.

“I heard three shots,” he said. “Bang, bang, bang. Then I looked out the window and I saw the kerfuffle.”

The resident said he did not see the victims, but saw two men in their mid-30s taken from the scene in handcuffs in separate marked and unmarked cars. 

Inwood Twitter user Artforstrangers posted a video of the aftermath on a rain soaked Cooper Street moments after ambulances and police arrived on the scene to investigate. The video shows two men led away in handcuffs by police.

“I heard the gun shots a few minutes ago, I see the police tape is already up,” he said during the short video that shows a blurred image of an individual under a white sheet. 

“I think I just heard a guy screaming, I don’t know if that was the suspect,” he said.

Inwood residents tweeted that they were shaken to hear of the gunfire on a residential block.

“Whoa, this chick just walked into @inwood_local, saying that someone was shot on cooper street,” wrote Jason Martinez from a neighborhood bar.

“Hearing mad sirens from my apartment #inwood praying for all,” tweeted Kelly Quirk.