UPDATE: As of 9:30 p.m., the officers were discharged from the hospital and were in stable condition.
Two police officers wounded in a New Jersey shootout that left a man wanted for murder in New York dead were expected to recover from their injuries, authorities and union officials said.
Neither the officers nor the suspect were identified while an investigation was underway into the circumstances of the shooting, which began shortly after midnight Thursday in the area of a Middlesex County hotel and banquet hall.
A detective from NYPD and an officer from the Woodbridge Police Department were both injured after a phalanx of officers confronted the suspect outside a complex that houses the Raritan Hotel and the Royal Albert’s Palace Banquet Hall in Woodbridge, state Attorney General Matthew Platkin said at a Thursday news briefing.
Officers arrived at the banquet hall after New Jersey authorities, using license plate-reader technology, flagged a vehicle registered to a “a person of interest in a homicide case being investigated by the New York Police Department,” Platkin told reporters.
“Law enforcement officers encountered the person of interest, and there was an exchange of gunfire,” said the attorney general, whose office handles police shooting inquiries in New Jersey. The suspect was killed, authorities said.
“We are not yet releasing their identities, but I ask that members of the public keep them in their thoughts and prayers as they begin their road to recovery.”
Authorities provided few details about the circumstances of the shooting, which under state law will be subject to a grand jury investigation.
Peter Andreyev, president of the New Jersey State PBA, a police union, said the officers were expected to make a full recovery. He also pointed to an unprecedented rise in the number of officers wounded in the line of duty recently.
“It is outrageous that in the past six months, 5 officers have been shot in New Jersey,” he said. “We have never had this level of violence and (it) must be stopped.”
Staff writer Anthony G. Attrinocontributed to this report.
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