After at least ten people were shot on a Brooklyn subway train early Tuesday, police are looking for a gunman.
According to Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, the shooting happened before 8:30 a.m. on a Manhattan-bound N train in Brookyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.
The train was approaching the 36th Street station when a guy donned a gas mask and opened a canister, causing the train to fill with smoke and the man to begin fire, according to Sewell. The shooter was dressed in a green construction jacket and a gray sweatshirt, according to Sewell, who characterized him as a Black man with a large frame.
Laura Kavanagh, First Deputy Commissioner of the New York City Fire Department, reported 16 people were injured, including 10 who were shot. Five persons were in a critical yet stable condition. None of the injuries, according to Sewell, were life-threatening.
At the subway station on 36th Street and 4th Avenue, firefighters reacted to a smoke alarm. According to a statement from the New York City Fire Department, crews discovered the shooting victims as well as multiple “undetonated devices.”
According to Sewell, there were no known explosive devices on the train as of Tuesday afternoon. “At this point,” she said, the incident was not being investigated as a terrorist attack, but she requested for the public’s help with any images, videos, or information regarding the incident or alleged shooter.
Other persons suffered from smoke inhalation, shrapnel wounds, and other injuries as a result of the panic that followed the shooting, according to Kavanagh.
According to spokeswoman Lacy Scarmana, eight of the injured were taken to NYU Langone Hospital – Brooklyn, where they are all in stable condition. Three people were injured in the attack and were being treated to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Hospital, but no information on their medical conditions was immediately available.
While waiting for the metro, Avellana De La Cruz, 25, was messaging her boss that she would be late to work when scores of individuals, some with bloodstains, began running out of the station.
De La Cruz lingered at the station, perplexed, until an announcement instructed riders to leave. De La Cruz said she was leaving the station when she was approached by a woman who was covered in blood and had a wound across her face. They exited the metro together and searched for an ambulance.
