NYPD wounds two bystanders after shooting at unarmed man

POSTED AT 11:55 AM ON SEPTEMBER 15, 2013 BY  ED MORRISSEY

Police opened fire on an agitated man darting in front of cars in New York’s Times Square, wounding two women instead.

The incident took place late Saturday night — a time when the popular destination is bustling with tourists.

The women ages 54 and 35 were taken to a hospital. A bullet hit one on the right knee while the other one suffered a wound to her buttocks, police said.

After the two officers fired three shoots in an attempt to subdue the man, and missed, they struck him with a Taser, authorities said. He was later taken to the hospital as “an emotionally disturbed person.”

One of the issues I have with films and TV shows with police shootouts is the wild shooting in which cops are depicted engaging. They are supposed to be trained to refrain from firing into crowded areas, but apparently life imitated art, at least in this instance. I suspect that these two may spend a lot of time at a desk after this — or perhaps more likely, looking for another line of work.

What makes this story more fascinating is that Twitter reported it in real time.  Twitchy aggregated the tweets , and this is the one that grabbed the network’s attention:

Omg just witnessed NYPD gun down a pedestrian in Times Square @CNN pic.twitter.com/AMCmFGrSZ4

— Kerri Ann Nesbeth (@knesbeth)  September 15, 2013