A man suspected of groping a teenage girl and another woman in a subway station was shot Friday by an off-duty officer after a dispute on the train platform.
The shooting occurred on the northbound platform of the A, C, B and D station at 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, police said.
Police say the mother of a teenage girl yelled for police at about 12:30 p.m. Friday in the station at 125th Street. The off-duty transit officer, who happened to be in the station, came to the woman's aid. Another woman also told the officer she was groped by the same man, who had gone down to the train platform on the northbound "D'' line.
The officer told the mother to call 911. She dialed from a pay phone inside the train station, police said. Meanwhile, the 40-year-old officer went down to the tracks to investigate.
Witnesses reported hearing "police — get down" before one shot was fired. The suspect, identified by police as Jacob Sanford, 22, from the Bronx, was hit once in the buttocks.
Police said Sanford has 19 unsealed prior arrests, including two separate arrests for felony assaults on police officers and arrests for robbery, menacing, and reckless endangering.
He faces multiple charges for forcible touching, sexual abuse, endangering the welfare of a child, and resisting arrest. He is still in stable condition at a hospital.
Harlem resident Orbit Clanton said he saw the officer subdue the suspected groper.
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"He had the suspect face down, facing north. And when the trains entered the station, what happened was the suspect tried in an aggressive move to get up," Clanton said.
In the preliminary stages of their investigation, police had no specifics on the altercation between the suspect and the officer. It was not clear whether the officer fired or the gun went off in the altercation with the suspect.
A knife was recovered on the track bed nearby but it was not clear whether the knife was part of the interaction between the officer and the suspect, Paul Browne, the department's chief spokesman, said.
