It happened shortly after 3 p.m. Sunday at the L Train platform at Van Sinderen and Sutter avenues in Brownsville. It started when police say the two officers followed a 37-year-old man up the stairs who hadn't paid his fare.
"The officers are asking him to stop. The male is refusing to stop at a certain point on the platform. The male, he mutters the words, 'I'm going to kill you if you don't stop following me,'" said NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.
That verbal threat became a physical one as the suspect pulled a knife from his pocket. Officers told the man to drop the weapon but the suspect told officers they would have to shoot him, Maddrey said.
The confrontation moved inside a train that had just pulled into the station and that's where police opened fire after tasering the suspect didn't work.
The bullets that flew inside the car and onto the platform struck the suspect and two passengers - a 26-year-old woman and a 49-year-old man - as well as a 40-year-old officer.
On Monday, the shot officer remained hospitalized at Brookdale University Hospital. It is unclear if the officer was hit by a bullet or fragment that came from his partner's gun.
The 37-year-old suspect Derell Mickles remains in critical condition at Kings County Hospital.
Mickles, who is accused of evading the subway fare and allegedly pulling out a knife from his pocket, has been charged with attempted assault, theft of service, menacing, criminal possession, according to police.
The 49-year-old male bystander struck in the head is in critical condition and the 26-year-old woman, also a bystander, was grazed in the leg by a bullet and is stable.
An NYPD official estimated the suspect was about seven feet from the NYPD officers at the time they opened fire, well within their "zone of safety" of 21 feet.
The NYPD Force Investigation Division will investigate.
Mayor Adams praised the two police officers who fired inside the subway station.
"Those officers stopped a very dangerous person who was committing a crime," Mayor Adams said.
"He was not shot for fare evasion. He was shot because he had a knife and he went after the police officers after repeatedly asking him to put down the knife," Adams continued.
Several videos circulating on social media and internally in the police department show chaos as subway riders rush on the elevated subway platform to get away from the gunfire.
Former NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said he believes police bodycam video will tell the whole story.
"The tactics are a little bit different in the subways, you have to understand , it's a very condensed environment with a lot of people," Boyce said. "People are carrying weapons onto the subway system and it has to be dealt with, but you act within your tactics and your instincts and your training and that's where this goes."
The NYPD is also looking for person pictured below who they say took the knife that the suspect used to threaten to the officers:
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