A police officer was one of 10 people struck by gunfire in violence that spread across three boroughs Saturday night into Sunday morning, authorities said.
Officer John Hirschberger, 28, was on foot patrol with another cop at Gates Avenue and Marcus Garvey Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant at around 2:30 a.m. when he encountered Naim Owens, who was being chased by three other cops, officials said.
A sergeant and two officers in plainclothes spotted Owens, 22, on Monroe Street adjusting his waistband and approached him, officials said.
Owens fled to Gates Avenue where he ran into Hirschberger, they said.
Owens fired one shot atthe cop’s left thigh and police returned fire, according to the NYPD.
Owens was shot once in his upper back and taken to Kings County Hospital, where he is in stable condition.
Hirschberger suffered only a graze wound and was released from the hospital.
Owens’ mentally ill brother was shot dead by police in 2007 during a domestic incident at his mother’s Gates Avenue home, law-enforcement sources said.
In other violence Saturday, three people were shot during a drive-by in Bedford-Stuyvesant at around 10:45 p.m.
Two men, 64 and 25, were waiting for a B46 bus when they were struck in the shoulder and foot respectively, while a 25-year-old woman was hit in the left thigh.
In Harlem, a 22-year-old man’s head was grazed by a bullet when two men burst into his Frederick Douglas Boulevard apartment at around midnight and stole his Playstation and iPhone.
At about the same time, Christopher Richards, 23, was shot dead in the Eastchester section of The Bronx, police said.
About two hours later, two 16-year-old boys were shot, each in a leg, on Third Avenue near 112th Street in East Harlem, police said.
Also, a 29-year-old man was shot in Central Park near West 102nd Street at around 4 a.m., cops said.
