A shots-fired call. A three-hour standoff. And an entry up a stairway that ends with a detective shot in the leg and the suspect dead. Here’s what happened, and why the stairway is the whole story.
NYPD officers from the 79th Precinct responded to 190 Kosciuszko St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant at 5:45 a.m. after neighbors reported gunshots inside a two-story brownstone. Officers made entry, saw 48-year-old Lamin Simmons holding a firearm, and pulled back to establish a perimeter. From there it became a barricaded subject situation — ESU, hostage negotiators, and Simmons’ own family working the scene.
Simmons’ wife and son got out safely. An elderly couple living upstairs could not. For close to two hours, negotiators and family tried to talk Simmons down while he continued firing rounds inside the apartment. At one point he began throwing items out a rear window at officers staged below: a microwave, a lamp, pots and pans.
At 8:52 a.m., ESU made entry. They found Simmons at the top of the stairs, on the same floor as the trapped elderly couple. Officers gave him multiple direct orders to drop the gun. He refused and opened fire, striking Detective Matthew Gale, a 15-year ESU veteran, in the left leg. At least four officers returned fire, striking Simmons.
Simmons was transported to Woodhull Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Gale was taken to Kings County Hospital with a tibial fracture in his left leg. He underwent surgery and is listed in stable condition, expected to make a full recovery.
The stairway entry is the whole story here. Fatal funnel doesn’t begin to cover it. A doorway funnel is bad enough — you’re exposed, but at least you’ve got options, left or right, forward or back. A stairway takes those options away. Once ESU committed to that stairwell, there was nowhere to go but up, into a position where the suspect held the high ground and officers had no cover. That’s exactly the scenario that got Gale hit. Officers train to avoid committing to a stairway like this for a reason, and this incident is exactly that reason on display.
This wasn’t a lack of effort or a bad plan gone worse. Negotiators worked it for two hours. Family got involved. Everything short of entry was tried first. But once Simmons resumed firing from inside and the elderly couple remained trapped on his floor, ESU didn’t have the option of waiting him out indefinitely. They went up the stairs because the situation forced their hand, not because it was the ideal tactical position. It rarely is.
