NYPD says wounded detective from Long Island likely hit by friendly fire

The NYPD detective shot in his protective vest over the weekend in Brooklyn appears to have been hit by friendly fire, the police department said Monday.

Det. Robert Karroll, a Suffolk County resident, was saved from serious injury when his vest stopped a bullet to his back, police said.

Karroll was sitting in an unmarked police vehicle with two other officers about 4 a.m. Sunday on Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights when he was shot, the NYPD said. The officers engaged an 18-year-old armed man who had approached their car with his gun visibly displayed and then walked around to the driver's side, according to the NYPD.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, addressing a news conference early Sunday at a Brooklyn hospital, said Karroll and the other officers got out of their vehicle to confront the man. Tisch said shots were fired and penetrated the front window of the police vehicle.

Officers fired their weapons and Karroll was shot once in the back of his armored vest "by what appears to be friendly fire," according to a timeline of the incident released by the NYPD. The suspect wasn't hit, Tisch said.

The NYPD arrested the suspect, who they later identified on Monday as Camani Bartletto, of West Orange, New Jersey. He was charged with two counts of attempted murder, along with criminal possession of a weapon, reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. 

Before the shooting, the same man pulled out a gun and pointed it in the direction of men standing outside a deli on Nostrand Avenue, police said. He entered the deli and then came back out with the gun visible, the NYPD said.

The suspect then allegedly fired his gun at a moving vehicle, said to be an Uber car with a passenger, hitting it. The driver and the passenger were not injured, investigators said.

Then, two minutes after shooting at the Uber, the suspect allegedly approached the unmarked police vehicle.

Karroll joined the NYPD in 2006, according to the department. In that time, he has made a total of 112 felony and 113 misdemeanor arrests, the NYPD said.

Although rare, friendly fire incidents, in which officers are wounded by other officers, sometimes can have fatal consequences.

In February 2019, Det. Brian Simonsen, 42, of Calverton, was fatally shot as he and a group of other police officers converged in front of a T-Mobile store in Queens that was being robbed. As two suspects, who possessed a fake handgun, exited the store, officers fired 42 rounds. Investigators determined that Simonsen was struck by friendly fire but couldn’t definitively say which officer fired the fatal shot.

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.comtonynewsday

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.