NEW YORK -- The Queens man suspected of shooting and critically wounding a New York City police officer who had driven up in an unmarked car to question him was charged with attempted murder Sunday, officials said.
The plainclothes officer, Brian Moore, 25, was shot in the face Saturday afternoon in Queens. He remained in critical but stable condition Sunday at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where he underwent surgery late Saturday night, the police said. Doctors have placed him in a medically induced coma.
The suspect, Demetrius Blackwell, 35 -- whose first name was erroneously spelled Demitrius in earlier reports -- was also charged with one count of assault and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
At his arraignment late Sunday in Queens Criminal Court, Blackwell did not enter a plea. He was ordered held without bail after appearing in court in a torn jumpsuit with his hands cuffed behind his back and legs shackled. He is due back in court Friday.
William Bratton, the police commissioner, described Blackwell as a man with a history of arrests -- including robbery and criminal possession of a weapon. He spent five years in state prison for an attempted murder in 2000 in which, according to state corrections records, he shot at a car in the course of a robbery.
Blackwell served the full five years of his sentence, and then returned to prison for violating parole in 2007. He was re-released in 2008.
Sunday afternoon, the gun used in the shooting had yet to be found. Dozens of officers could be seen on rooftops poking into gutters, raking through grass or taking apart sewer grates in search of the weapon in a tight radius of homes and yards near where the shooting occurred. Crime scene investigators set up a tent outside a home where Blackwell was arrested, a block from the spot where officials said he turned and fired on Moore and Moore's partner, Erik Jansen, as they approached him in a car.
"It's a tough search," said Stephen Davis, the department's top spokesman.
No shell casings were found at the scene, police said, an indication that the gun used may have been a revolver. Witnesses described hearing at least two shots, police said.
When the shooting took place around 6:15 p.m. Saturday, Moore and Jansen were in a car with Moore at the wheel, patrolling an area that had seen a spate of burglaries. They were on the lookout for activity associated with burglaries, Davis said, among other crime conditions, when they noticed Blackwell adjusting an object in his waistband and approached in their car from behind.
Officers had made several attempts to speak with Blackwell in connection with a violent episode in November when, the police said, he brandished a gun and hurled rocks at a neighbor's home before smashing the windshield of a parked car with a brick. But it was his suspicious movements on the street that drew the officers to him Saturday, the police said.
The officers ordered Blackwell to stop and exchanged words with him, but prosecutors said he turned suddenly and fired at least twice, striking Moore. Jansen was not hit and radioed for help.
"They did not have an opportunity to get out and return fire," Bratton said at a news conference Saturday night at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center with Mayor Bill de Blasio and other officials.
After the shooting, witnesses described Blackwell to responding officers and pointed them in the direction he ran, Bratton said. Officers searched house by house, and some could be seen walking on roofs as helicopters flew overhead.
After a 90-minute search, officers arrested Blackwell inside a single-family home within view of the shooting.
Blackwell's court-appointed lawyer said after the arraignment Sunday that his client was arrested at a house near the shooting site without a warrant and that "the arrest may be illegal."
A police spokesman declined to comment on the warrant, citing the ongoing investigation.
De Blasio called the shooting "a reminder of the dangers that all of our officers face every single day."
"Our hearts are with his family, his loved ones," the mayor said. "Our hearts are with his extended family, the men and women of the NYPD."
Moore, who comes from a family of police officers, has been on the job since July 2010.
Information for this article was contributed by J. David Goodman, Al Baker, Angela Macropoulos, Jeffrey E. Singer, Liam Stack and Alain Delaqueriere of The New York Times; and by Michael Balsamo, Jake Pearson, Amanda Y. Barrett and Tom Hays of The Associated Press
A Section on 05/04/2015