A man sought for questioning in an East Harlem shooting was killed early Thursday by police officers police in New Jersey after he fired a gun at two of them, including a New York City police detective, officials said.
The dead man, officials said, was shot shortly after midnight Thursday after New York City detectives tracked him to a hotel banquet hall in Woodbridge, N.J., a town about 36 miles south of Manhattan. His name had not been released as of Friday morning.
The man was exiting an elevator and heading toward the hotel’s lobby when he encountered officers who had been interviewing a witness. The man, who had been holding several bags, reached into his backpack and exchanged gunfire with the officers, according to the office of Matthew J. Platkin, New Jersey’s attorney general, which is investigating the incident.
A 35-year-old New York detective who has been with the Police Department at least 15 years, was shot in the foot, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. The detective’s name was also not released.
An officer with the Woodbridge Police Department, was also shot. Both are expected to recover, officials said.
“No police officer, or any member of law enforcement, should ever face this violence while performing their duties,” Mr. Platkin said in a statement.
The man who was killed was a person of interest in a June 7 shooting on 102nd Street and First Avenue in Manhattan, officials said.
Just after 8:30 that night, the police received a 911 call for shots fired. When officers arrived, they found a 29-year-old man who had been shot in the head. The man, whose name has not been released, was in critical condition on Friday, according to the New York police.
On Wednesday, the police in Edison, N.J., saw that the license plate of a vehicle connected to the June 7 shooting had been recorded by an automated plate reader.
Officers from Edison and Woodbridge tracked the vehicle to the Royal Albert’s Palace hall at the Raritan Hotel in Woodbridge. After finding the car in the hotel parking lot, they notified the New York Police Department, which responded by sending detectives from the 23rd Precinct.
The detective was the third New York City officer to be shot in the line of duty this month. On June 3, two officers were shot in Queens by a 19-year-old man whom they had tried to pull over for riding a motorbike the wrong way on a one-way street. Both survived.
Paul DiGiacomo, the president of the Detectives Endowment Association in New York, said on Friday that the detective shot in Woodbridge had put himself “in extreme danger to ensure violent, career criminals face justice.”
The union, he said, was “grateful not to be planning a funeral.”