Out-of-towner hit by stray bullet shooting outside Penn Station: ‘There was a shot and he dropped down’
An out-of-towner in the city on a work assignment was shot and wounded by a stray bullet as he waited for his wife outside Penn Station Monday evening, police said.
The 58-year-old victim, whom sources said has been in the city for about three months as part of his job, was standing near a concrete barrier by the New Jersey Transit entrance on Seventh Ave., near the northwest corner of W. 31st St., just after 5:50 p.m.
That’s when an argument between two men in the station spilled outside, and one of the men opened fire, hitting the victim in the leg.
The victim was “standing there, texting on his phone,” said George Harris, 46, a taxi dispatcher for the 34th St. Partnership, who watched the action unfold from across the street and rushed in to help.
“There was a shot and he dropped down,” Harris said. “I ran over and said, ‘Are you alright?’ He said, ‘Something’s wrong with my leg.’ I ran and got an officer.”
An NYPD officer ripped open his shorts, Harris recounted, and the officer said, “That’s a gunshot.”
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea recounted a fight over food inside Penn Station between two strangers that triggered the senseless violence.
“The shooter comes up to the male that’s eating food downstairs, possibly asking for some food,” Shea told reporters. “He’s kind of shunned away, and that kind of spills onto the street here. We do not believe they knew each other prior to this interaction.”
Shea said the victim was hoping to meet his wife before he was shot.
The astounded Harris recalled the gunshot wound “was a big old hole.”
“He was shot in the (backside). I told him as they were putting him in the ambulance, ‘That’s really going to hurt tomorrow,’” Harris said.
Medics took the victim to Bellevue Hospital for treatment and he was expected to recover, sources said.
Cops made no immediate arrests. Investigators were looking at two videos of the scene, sources said.
“He shouldn’t have gotten shot,” Harris said. “He wasn’t doing anything to anybody. I was thinking of his family. I’m sure they were worried about him.”
