Twelve years after an NYPD cop survived a shooting inside a Lower East Side NYCHA development, the gunman is still being sought.
On July 5, 2012, Officer Brian Groves dodged death when a bullet struck him in his bullet-resistant vest as he and his partner were conducting a vertical patrol in two different stairwells inside the same building on Essex St., part of the Seward Park Extension complex.
Police said Groves, then 31, saw a man with a .22-caliber pistol, yelled out “Gun!” and chased him down four flights to the 19th floor, at which point the gunman fired, striking the seven-year veteran once in vest.
The bullet lodged near the right ventricle of his heart, then-NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
Groves managed to return fire, police said, but the gunman got away, apparently unscathed.
The Seward Park Extension, comprised of just two buildings, is far from a hotbed of crime.
There were no surveillance cameras inside the building where the shooting happened and the gunman, despite a description by Groves that yielded a sketch, was somehow not captured on any other cameras in the area.
“There are way more cameras around now but even then there were enough around,” said a former police official familiar with the investigation at the time. “But we never spotted him.”
Groves was rushed to Bellevue Hospital and released the next day.
Later, at the doorway to his Long Island home, Groves waved and told the Daily News he was “glad to be with my family.”
“I’m feeling better,” he added.
He later retired on a mostly tax-free disability pension and moved to Florida. Neither he nor his partner, now-Sgt. Eric Corniel, responded to a request for comment this week.
Immediately after the shooting, police pressed local drug crews for information about the shooter, sources told the Daily News.
That September, the .22-caliber gun was recovered during an undercover buy that was part of a larger drug probe involving the NYPD and the Drug Enforcement Administration. None of the 13 indicted suspects were ever charged with shooting Groves,
Police ask anyone with information about the gunman, described as Black and in his 20s at the time with cornrows, to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. There is a $32,000 reward. All calls will be kept confidential.