Two people were injured Saturday when a shooting at a party led to a mass panic that ended with cops reportedly firing upon escaping suspects, officials said.
When the smoke cleared, cops had apprehended the shooter that started the mad dash out of the basement party near the corner of Rockaway Parkway and Flatlands Avenue Saturday morning.
One of the men with the shooter was also shot, possibly by responding officers, officials said.
As of this writing, investigators had yet to determine if the second victim had been shot by the cop who fired two rounds during a break-neck chase through backyards and over fences.
Officials said that upwards of 30 officers swarmed the area following the 2:55 a.m. shooting on July 26 as crowds of people celebrated inside a rented-out basement.
Officials said that sometime during the celebration the alleged gunman, identified by prosecutors as 18-year-old Jamel Childs, pointed a .38-caliber revolver at another man during an argument and fired three rounds, hitting him in the chest.
When the victim tried to escape from Childs, and was seen staggering about the basement claiming that he had been shot, startled witnesses began pouring out of the basement location.
When cops responded, they found dozens of people running from the hall into neighboring yards.
A witness told police that Childs was allegedly with a group escaping through some rear yards and scaling fences in a crazed getaway attempt.
Officers caught up with Childs and three other men and ordered them to stop. When they didn’t, a chase began — a pursuit that ended when one of the cops reportedly let two rounds go from his pistol, officials said.
Three men – who Childs and a man who had been shot in the arm – were taken into custody, officials said.
Cops reportedly found the .38 revolver on Childs, who was charged with attempted murder, assault, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon.
Childs’ victim was listed in good condition at Brookdale Hospital, officials said. His concerned friends took him to the hospital in their own car as cops responded to the scene.
Saturday’s madness marked the 19th shooting to take place in Canarsie this year – an increase of 72 percent over last year, according to NYPD figures. By late July, 2007, 11 shootings had been investigated by authorities, according to officials.
Over the past month, detectives have been investigating at least one shooting a week – a staggering fact for the usually quiet residential community.
But Captain Milt Marmara, the commanding officer of the 69th Precinct, said that the increase isn’t a cause for worry.
It only appears that shootings were up because of the unusually low number of incidents that happened last year, he explained.
“If you look at the figures from two years ago, there were 28 shootings being investigated at this time,” he said, adding that the precinct is still down in homicides – by 75 percent.
By late July, 2007, eight homicides were being investigated, statistics show. So far this year, only two murders had been committed.
The precinct has also seen an increase in gun arrests – four of which also took place just last weekend, the captain explained.
Marmara said that he is placing additional resources in areas where he’s seen a flare up in shooting incidents.
At the same time, he is telling is officers to roll by parties and clubs in the neighborhood where shootings could erupt.
“We try our best to do as much prevention as we can,” he said. “We even went by this party earlier in the night, but everything was quiet.”
