NYPD Sgt. Christopher Leap, wounded while pursuing robbery suspect in Chinatown: 'I'm doing fine'

The NYPD sergeant from Long Island who was shot and wounded Thursday afternoon while pursuing a robbery suspect in Chinatown was recovering and greeting well-wishers at home on Friday.

"I’m doing fine, and my partner will be out of the hospital by tomorrow," Christopher Leap, 34, told a Newsday reporter from the front door of his home in Suffolk County, adding he could not disclose any other information connected to the shooting.

Around noon, Leap, who wore blue athletic shorts and slippers, stepped out briefly to greet two uniformed NYPD officers visiting the family. They exchanged smiles and hugs on the backyard patio, chatting for 15 minutes.

Leap, along with NYPD Sgt. Carl Johnson, 42, of Queens, were injured during a foot chase with the suspect, identified as Joshua Dorsett, 26, of Manhattan, after he allegedly held up a number of women at a mahjong parlor on Canal Street, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters.

As of Friday evening, Dorsett was awaiting arraignment and facing possible assault, weapons, robbery and other charges, according to law enforcement officials.

Among the evidence in the case secured by detectives is a surveillance video taken from inside the parlor at the time of robbery, said a law enforcement official. The video shows a man in a gray hoodie rushing into the second-story room with what appears to be a handgun and rushing around the room and apparently grabbing money from players standing with their hands in the air, according to the official.

The shooting happened when both Leap, who is assigned to the 7th Precinct and Johnson, who is assigned to the 5th Precinct, responded to 911 calls from that Canal Street location. They were both taken to Bellevue Hospital after the shooting.

Dorsett, according to Kenny, is a known gang member and is on probation from an earlier case. At a news conference at Bellevue Hospital Thursday night, Mayor Eric Adams said Dorsett had visited his probation officer earlier in the day.

Late Thursday, Leap — accompanied by family, fellow rank-and-file officers and NYPD brass — was released from Bellevue after treatment for a gunshot wound to the leg. He arrived at his home around 9:45 p.m. Thursday in a black Ford van, flanked by two NYPD patrol cars with lights flashing.

Neither Leap nor the other officer fired their weapon as they pursued Dorsett in the vicinity of Eldridge Street, which is north of the robbery location, police officials said. When they first confronted Dorsett on the street after getting a description from the robbery victims, he allegedly drew a handgun, tussled with the officers and then ran off, firing at the two police officers before eventually being apprehended, Kenny said.

Johnson was hit in the groin and remained in the hospital as of Friday afternoon.

When Dorsett was taken into custody, police officers found a loaded .45 caliber handgun in his possession, Kenny said.

The latest shootings come after two NYPD officers, one from Nassau and the other Suffolk, were shot and wounded in June after a robbery suspect opened fire during a foot pursuit. The officers, Richard Yarusso and Christopher Abreu, both 26 and of the 115th Precinct in Elmhurst, were released from NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst about six hours after the shooting.

In late March, NYPD Jonathan Diller, 31, a three-year department veteran, was fatally shot during a traffic stop in Far Rockaway.

Diller was the first NYPD officer killed in the line of duty since 2022. Officers Wilbert Mora, 27, and Jason Rivera, 22, were fatally shot that year while responding to a domestic dispute at a Harlem apartment.

With Michael O'Keeffe and Nicholas Grasso