2 NYPD officers shot, wounded breaking up armed robbery in Chinatown, police say

Two NYPD sergeants — including one from Suffolk County — were shot and wounded Thursday afternoon while pursuing a robbery suspect in Chinatown, officials said...

The officers suffered injuries described as non-life-threatening 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 at 91 Canal St., said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.

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

One of the two wounded officers, identified by the NYPD as Christopher Leap, 34, is a resident of Suffolk County.

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 Suffolk home around 9:45 p.m. Thursday in a black Ford van, flanked by two NYPD patrol cars with lights flashing . Dressed in a blue T-shirt, shorts and sneakers, the officer and a female companion entered his home. They declined to speak to a Newsday reporter at the scene.

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 cops before eventually being apprehended. Kenny said.

The other wounded officer was hit in the groin and remained at Bellevue late Thursday. His name and hometown were not immediately released.

When Dorsett was taken into custody, cops 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, Queens, 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, Queens.

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 in 2022 while responding to a domestic dispute at a Harlem apartment.