Two transit officers shot on N train; gunman dead

Two plainclothes transit officers were shot inside the N train as it approached the Fort Hamilton Parkway station on the evening of Thursday, January 3.

Police Officers Michael Levay and Lukasz Kozicki, assigned to Transit District 34, were on patrol that evening with another officer and a lieutenant. At 7:32 p.m., they noticed someone moving from the second car to the third car of a Manhattan-bound train, which violates transit laws.

As the train approached the Fort Hamilton Parkway station, the officers approached the individual and asked for identification, intending to remove him from the train. The male stood up as if to comply and instead of pulling out a wallet, he pulled a 9-millimeter Taurus handgun from his waistband and opened fire.

Kozicki, 32, was shot three times: once in each of his upper thighs and once in the groin. According to the NYPD, a witness claimed that the shooter seemed to notice the officer’s Kevlar vest and aimed low as he fired.

Levay, 27, was shot in the lower back but was protected by his vest. He returned fire and killed the shooter.

A passenger in the same car sustained a graze wound to the leg during the fire fight, but no one else was injured.

Kozicki and Levay were taken to Lutheran Medical Center’s Level 1 Trauma Center around 7:30 p.m. Both officers were released from the hospital on Friday, January 4.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly held a press conference outside Lutheran later that evening, and met with the officers and their families.

“Tough enforcement of quality of life crimes on the subway – the work that these officers were engaged in – is a big part of how we’ve made New York the safest big city in the nation, and how we’ve dramatically cut crime on the subways and across the city,” Bloomberg said. “The doctors here at Lutheran have given both officers excellent care.”

Bloomberg also renewed his call for federal gun control legislation to be passed.

“In recent weeks, we’ve heard some people say that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. But sometimes the good guys get shot – and sometimes, they are killed,” he said. “But we owe it to the good guys to do whatever we can to protect them – just as they do whatever they can to protect us. Instead, Washington is letting the bad guys shoot our police officers, our children, our neighbors – and it just has to stop.”