An NYPD officer survived getting shot in the face Monday during an early-morning shootout with a gunman suspected of killing his Brooklyn neighbor an hour earlier, police said.
Officer Sharjeel Waris was guarding evidence inside the vestibule of a Brownsville building where the suspect and murder victim lived when the killer suddenly opened his first-floor apartment door and fired a short-range shotgun blast at him, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
Waris, 25, a four-year NYPD veteran, returned fire, striking the 24-year-old gunman, who barricaded himself back inside his home only to die there from his wounds, Tisch said.
The gunman was identified by family members as Dashawn Larode.
The wounded officer, meanwhile, was rushed to Brookdale University Hospital with a minor birdshot pellet wound to the left side of his face.
“He is in good spirits,” Tisch said of the wounded officer.
“But make no mistake, this could have ended very differently,” she said. “What happened this morning is a reminder of how quickly danger finds the men and women who protect this city. They stood their ground, they did their jobs and they kept people safe. And once again they reminded us all what it means to put on that uniform.”
Cops said that earlier Larode shot his neighbor in the adjacent apartment, 41-year-old Leroy Wallace, who stumbled out of the building and collapsed on the sidewalk near Hegeman Ave. and Thomas S. Boyland St., where responding cops found him dead just before 6 a.m.
Responding officers knocked on Larode’s door and nobody answered, leading them to believe he was not home and had fled the scene.
But he was still lurking inside, waiting for an opportunity to strike, Tisch said. The 7:45 a.m. sneak attack on Waris, who was guarding a shell casing in the vestibule being preserved as evidence to the murder, cost the killer his own life.
The sister of the gunman, Dashawna Larode, told News 12 Brooklyn that she was sleeping inside the apartment that she shared with her brother when she was awakened by a noise outside her window.
“I walked out to see what my brother was doing, and his last words were, ‘Dashawna, just put your hands up,'” she told the outlet.
Dashawna said she soon heard around six gunshots fired and when she went to check on her brother, she saw him lying on the ground.
Initially, cops were not certain Dashawn had been wounded in the exchange. During the subsequent standoff, cops busted a first-floor window and employed a drone to check out the shooter’s apartment.
When the drone confirmed Dashawn was dead on the kitchen floor, his shotgun by his side, cops suspected at first that he had killed himself. But with no shell casings or other shooting evidence inside, officials concluded he was wounded during the exchange with Waris.
“I have been briefed on the NYPD officer who was shot in Brooklyn this morning,” Mayor Adams wrote on X from Israel, where he is in the middle of a visit. “Praying for the officer’s recovery and we will continue to monitor the situation.”
Adams’ top deputy, First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, visited the wounded cop and his family at the hospital before the officer’s release.
“Fortunately, he is doing well,” Mastro told reporters. “He has a loving and supportive family.”
Waris was wheeled out of the hospital in a wheelchair and about to go home, his parents at his side, as fellow officers applauded and cheered.
Waris took the test to become an NYPD cop when he was just 19 and joined the force at age 21, Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association union said.
“A job that he always wanted to do, and he loves doing it, and he’s going to continue to do it and do it well,” Hendry said.
The two-story brick building where the shootings unfolded has four apartments, two on each floor.
“It’s a terrible situation,” an aunt of Dashawn told the Daily News.
Wallace had no criminal history, according to police sources, and neighbors couldn’t fathom why he was targeted by the gunman.
“He’s very good,” said a friend of Wallace who showed up at the building with Wallace’s devastated wife Monday afternoon. “He’s very, very quiet.”
Janet Edwards, 73, a neighbor who lives on the block, was awakened by the gunfire that killed Wallace.
“Big boom, three times,” she recalled. “I looked, I see the police … I see the body on the floor.”
She knew both Wallace and his killer and was mystified at what could have led to the bloodshed.
“I never hear no argument, nothing. Nothing” she said. “This is a quiet neighborhood.”
The building’s super also said there were no signs of trouble between the gunman and Wallace before the shock slaying.
“I don’t know if there was anything going on between them,” said the super, John Bell. “I’ve never seen them argue. … It’s a shock … It’s terrible.”
The super said the gunman lived with his sister, moving in a few months ago. A military spokesman confirmed that Dashawn had served four years in the Army as a signal support systems specialist, starting in August 2019. He had no deployments during his service.
Two months ago, Dashawn complained about a problem with the water, and the super fixed it.
“He was polite. … He seems like a quiet person,” the super said of the killer. “If there was a problem, he would call me.”
Two officers racing to the murder scene got into a crash on New Lots Ave., Tisch said. They were taken to Brookdale University Hospital, along with the driver of the other vehicle. All three victims were in stable condition.
With Theodore Parisienne
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