Cops: Police may have shot Brooklyn woman

A Brooklyn woman who died during a wild Labor Day weekend of shootings could have been killed by a shot from a group of police officers returning fire Monday night against an armed suspect, officials acknowledged Tuesday.

Denise Gay, 56, was struck once in the head as she sat on the stoop of her home at Park Place in Prospect Heights, police said. Paul Browne, an NYPD spokesman, said a piece of a copper-jacketed bullet similar to one police use was found in Gay's hoodie.

Browne said investigators were trying to determine if the bullet retrieved from Gay can be matched to any of the eight police guns involved in a shootout with suspect Leroy Webster, 32. Moments earlier, Webster is believed to have shot and killed Eusi Johnson, 29, who was fleeing toward the Franklin Avenue shuttle station, police said.

Witnesses had seen Webster fire in the direction of Gay. Detectives will try to determine if Webster's gun fired the shot that killed Gay, Browne said.

Officers Avichaim Dicken, 29, of Centereach, and Omar Medina, 31, among eight officers on the scene, were wounded in the incident but were in stable condition. Webster fired at police and was hit a number of times by cops who fired 73 rounds, Browne said.

Webster is seen on a security video dropping down on a stoop nearby, his legs quivering, he said. He raised his arm to fire at police again, even after being shot twice by police, according to Browne. Webster was in critical condition Tuesday at Kings County Hospital Center, police said.

A spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives said the gun used by Webster was traced to a Georgia purchaser who bought the gun in February 2008 from a federally licensed gun dealer. ATF agents were going to interview the purchaser Tuesday, the spokesman said.

The deaths punctuated a frenzy of 52 city shootings from Friday through Labor Day resulting in 67 victims hit by gunfire, eight fatally.

Three of the cases and five of the victims were related to the West Indian Day parade, said Browne, who added that police confiscated 15 guns during the pre-parade J'Ouvert party period.

The spasm of shootings, more than 80 percent more for the week above what occured a year ago in the city, prompted Mayor Michael Bloomberg to denounce federal officials for what he told The Associated Press was a lack of courage in controlling gun trafficking.

But city Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria) said City Hall has to step up and increase the size of the police force from its current low level.

"They [the public] really don't want to hear they are safer than 20 years ago. . . . They want to know why they aren't as safe as they were last year," Vallone said.