An NYPD detective was shot and wounded by another officer as he tried to stop a repeat felon on a carjacking spree in Queens Friday morning, police said.
Detective Corey Fisher, a Queens South narcotics cop, was shot in the leg and arm during the clash on 21st Road near the Whitestone Expressway Service Road in Whitestone around 8:50 a.m., after the crook with a long rap sheet had stolen a Toyota Highlander from an Uber driver.
The thief had also tried to steal two other cars nearby, police said.
The suspect, a four-time convicted felon, had just been arrested Thursday night for turnstile jumping in Manhattan, officials said. Both Mayor Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch expressed outrage that the suspect was out on the streets, blaming it on a broken criminal-justice system.
Fisher, a 12-year NYPD veteran, was shot by another cop after he was caught in the crossfire, Adams and NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a press conference at Jamaica Hospital.
Suspect carjacker Kevin Dubuisson didn’t have a firearm, cops confirmed. He attacked the Uber driver with a metal object, and had motioned to his pockets as if he had a gun when confronting his prior victims, but it wasn’t clear if he had the metal object in his hands when police opened fire.
“It was a friendly-fire incident,” the mayor said about the shooting. “Thankfully, these injuries are not life-threatening and he’s expected to make a full recovery.”
Dubuisson was not hit by gunfire, officials said. The suspect has a history of fighting with police and was released from prison in March after serving 15 months for an attempted robbery conviction in Brooklyn.
“I want to be clear, regardless of who shot our detective, there’s one person responsible for starting the chain of events that landed us in the hospital today,” Adams said about Dubuisson. “This is a man who should have been behind bars, not on our streets.”
On Thursday around 2:30 p.m., Dubuisson, 28, was stopped for jumping a turnstile at the 28th St. station for the No. 6 train, at Park Ave. South, and given a desk appearance ticket.
He also allegedly stole two cars in Manhattan, including an idling yellow taxi before heading out to Queens.
Fisher was returning to his office after executing a search warrant when a 911 call came over about a carjacking in progress, Police Commissioner Tisch said.
When they arrived, they spotted Dubuisson rolling away in an Uber driver’s black Toyota Grand Highlander. The officers ordered him to pull over but he kept on going and made a turn from the Whitestone Expressway Service Road onto 21st Road.
As he did so, Dubuisson rammed an unmarked police car before officers were able to box him in on 22nd Road, preventing him from going any further.
During the heated moments that followed, three cops from the 109th Precinct opened fire on Dubuisson, officials said. Bullets missed the carjacker, but hit the detective, who was with his fellow narcotics officers in front of the Highlander.
“It was a crossfire incident,” Kenny said.
It was not immediately disclosed how many rounds were fired. No firearm was found at the scene, officials said.
Neighbors recalled hearing a “spray of gunfire” before fellow officers rushed the wounded detective to Jamaica Hospital in their patrol cruiser.
Fisher was in “good spirts” and was undergoing surgery, Tisch said Friday.
“I just spoke to his mom and his wife, who is expecting a child, and it was a relief for them to learn that their loved one was going to be OK,” Adams added.
Police said Dubuisson’s car-stealing spree began in Manhattan when he swiped an idling yellow taxi at the corner of Second Ave. and E. 33rd St. in Kips Bay around 9 p.m. Thursday. He hit a bicyclist as he made his escape, but the pedaler was not seriously harmed.
A few minutes later, he abandoned the cab at E. 35th St. and Park Ave. and wandered into a parking garage at E. 36th St. and Park Ave., where he took the keys to another car and drove off with it.
He drove that vehicle downtown to the corner of Murray and West Sts., where he crashed into a construction site, cops said.
Responding officers stopped Dubuisson, but only gave him a summons for not having the registration for the vehicle he was in. The car, police sources said, had not yet been reported stolen.
On Friday morning, about 15 minutes before his clash with police, Dubuisson had tried to steal a car from a Mobil gas station on Parsons Blvd., which is about a block away from the shooting occurred, but was scared off by station employees.
Surveillance footage acquired by the Daily News shows Dubuisson, wearing white pants and a light-colored jacket, pacing near the pumps before jumping into a white car.
As Dubuisson jumped behind the wheel of the Hyundai Santa Fe and started the ignition, Mobil station employee H. Ayache raced over and stuck his arm through the driver’s-side window, trying to grab the keys.
Dubuisson rolled up the window, pinning Ayache’s head and arm between the glass and the window frame.
“If your car’s here, it’s like my car. I’m responsible,” Ayache told The News. “You see somebody walk inside a car, I’m going to do what I’ve got to do.”
One of Ayache’s customers helped free him as Dubuisson ran to a Mercedes parked at the station, but couldn’t get inside.
“It was locked,” Dubuisson said. “I was yelling at him, ‘Just get the hell out of here!’ I didn’t want any issues.”
The carjacker ran off and Ayache and the other briefly customer chased him down 21st Road.
As he fled, the carjacker tried to make as if he had a gun but never actually flashed one, said Ayache, adding he wasn’t fooled.
“I didn’t see a gun, but that’s what he tried to show me,” he recalled. “I think, if he has a gun, he would have shot me already.”
Within moments, Dubuisson’s car-robbing spree would climax in even more chaos.
“Ten minutes later, the whole world changed,” Ayache said.
On 21st Road, Dubuisson tried to carjack a woman outside her home, but her husband ran out and chased him off, cops said.
Cops were already responding to the woman’s 911 call when Dubuisson approached the Uber driver, who was idling on the Whitestone Expressway Service Road.
He banged on the door with the metal object and pulled the Uber driver out of the Highlander, not realizing that the Uber driver still had the key fob to the vehicle, police said.
He tried to drive off, but the Highlander stopped once it got out of range of the fob.
Realizing his victim still had it, Dubuisson chased down and tackled the Uber driver, struck him with a metal object, grabbed the device and headed back to the Highlander.
“It happened right in front of my house,” said neighbor Alex Loarca, 20. “I was just getting out of my bed and I heard screaming. I thought it was construction or a garbage truck at first, but it got louder. I opened my door and an Asian guy in a business-casual suit was screaming that someone had took his car and that the guy had a weapon.”
Cops showed up a few moments later and ran in the direction of Dubuisson, Loarca recalled.
“A couple of minutes go by and I heard a loud noise,” he said. “(It) was gunshots.
“It’s crazy,” Loarca said. “We’re trying to start our day and we’re starting it with this chaos.”
Criminal charges against Dubuisson were pending Friday.
He was released from prison in March after serving 15 months in prison for an April 15, 2023, robbery. He was arrested for robbing a man of his headphones at knifepoint near the corner of Kings Highway and McDonald Ave. in Brooklyn, prosecutors said.
“Give me all of your stuff or I will kill you,” he told his victim, according to court papers.
Dubuisson ultimately pleaded to a third-degree attempted robbery charge and was sentenced to a year and six months in prison. He remains on parole until October, according to state records.
Tisch said Dubuisson has 10 unsealed arrests on his record, which include “multiple robberies and multiple assaults.”
New York’s top cop blamed changes to the state’s bail-reform rules for Dubuisson’s quick release after cops grabbed him for jumping the turnstile at the 28th St. station. Before the new laws kicked in in 2019, someone on parole would have never been released on a turnstile-jumping offense, Tisch said.
Dubuisson also has a documented history of mental illness, Tisch said.
“He should not have been out on our streets this morning,” she said.
“Before going out to attempt a carjacking, he walked out of one of our criminal justice locations,” Mayor Adams added. “That is the definition of insanity — arresting the same person over and over again and expecting different results.”
In her State of the State address earlier this year, Gov. Hochul vowed to roll back some of the discovery reform laws that have made it more difficult to prosecute a defendant, though wouldn’t promise to update bail reform laws.
In a 2022 opinion piece, Hochul said, “blaming bail reform for the increase in violence that cities across America are facing isn’t fair and isn’t supported by the data.”
The shooting comes about a month after Police Officer Didarul Islam was gunned down in a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper by rampaging gunman Shane Tamura.
Originally Published: August 22, 2025 at 9:18 AM EDT
