NYPD officer shot, suspect critical in Lower East Side gunfight

NEW YORK — An New York Police Department officer was shot and a suspect was killed Thursday as police attempted to arrest a sex offender wanted for shooting a man earlier this year, police said.

With a warrant in hand, cops arrived at an apartment Kent Edwards, 43, was known to “couch surf” at on Eldridge St. near Stanton St. around 11:45 a.m., NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a news briefing.

Two women inside the apartment told officers with the Manhattan Violent Felony Squad that Edwards was inside a bathroom with a gun, Kenny said.

“There was one police car there and the guy was waving a gun out the window,” said Diana Aldahondo, who lived across the street. “He was waving it and (police) screamed, ‘Gun!'”

Aldahondo, 64, described a chaotic scene once cops spotted a gun as panicked people ran and “an invasion of cops” swarmed to the building.

Officers on the scene called for the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit to respond, and they spent nearly three hours working to coax Kent out of the apartment.

“Body armor, shields, everything,” Aldahondo said of the elite specialized police unit. “They tried to talk him out, they really tried, but they did what they had to do.”

Members of the unit attempted to breach the bathroom with a small camera and drone, but Edwards destroyed both pieces of tech.

“They tried to use a lot of technology but a lot of the technology wasn’t really helping them out the way they needed it,” said NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.

Finally, the officers sent in an avatar — a camera on wheels — and followed close behind into the apartment, cops said.

“When they came with the avatar, that’s when he came out and started shooting,” Maddrey said.

Edwards fired off four shots. Three of the bullets hit officers’ shields known as bunkers, and the other was caught in a bulletproof vest.

The bullets “easily could’ve been inside our officers,” Maddrey said.

The officers returned fire, striking Edwards twice, according to police.

“When they brought him out on a stretcher, he was still alive but they were doing chest compressions on him,” Aldahondo recalled. “It was very scary.”

Medics took Edwards to an area hospital, but he could not be saved, cops said.

All the officers involved were taken to a local hospital and were not seriously injured.

Police were attempting to take Kent into custody for an Oct. 18 shooting outside Iggy’s Bar on Second Ave. near E. 76th St. on the Upper East Side, police said.

The victim and his wife were inside the bar when they got into an argument with Kent over using a photo booth, police said.

The argument escalated and spilled out onto the street where Kent allegedly shot the man in the leg and pistol whipped him in the head.

Kent, of the Bronx, has 11 arrests in the city dating back to 1995, police said.

He served more than 12 years behind bars for attempted rape and criminal sale of a controlled substance. He was released from prison in 2012, records show.

“The police were looking for him but he was on the run,” said his ex-girlfriend, who did not want to be named. “He was on parole and he didn’t want to check in anymore.”

In February, Kent was arrested for rape. In 2022, he was nabbed for strangulation. He also had an active warrant for failing to register as a sex offender, police said.

“He was a convicted rapist,” the ex- told The New York Daily News. “He kept a lot of things from me, much of what he did was hidden.”

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