By Sean Gardiner, Alison Fox and Pervaiz Shallwani
A police officer fatally shot a Brooklyn man who was armed with a .38-caliber revolver as he was coming to the aid of his stepbrother following a gunpoint robbery.
A series of chaotic events — some mirroring the circumstances that led to the shooting death of New York Police Department Officer Peter Figoski a month ago in the same Brooklyn precinct — resulted in 26-year-old Duane Browne emerging from his East New York row house with a gun in hand on Thursday night.
Police believe the victim was rushing out to save his brother from two armed robbers. At the same time, however, police officers were entering the row house 943 Schenck Ave. looking for gunmen they believed were inside.
Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, said that a 30-year-old uniformed officer, whose name was not released, identified himself and ordered Duane Browne to drop his gun. One neighbor’s 911 call recorded an officer yelling “drop the gun,” the police spokesman said.
Duane Browne didn’t say anything in reply and didn’t drop the gun, the spokesman said. Instead, he took a quick step back and made a movement that police officials were not immediately able to describe. The officer fired one shot from approximately 17 feet away, striking Duane Browne in the right side of his chest.
After he was shot, Duane Browne ran back into his brother’s basement apartment and made his way to the first floor, where his mother lives, before collapsing. His girlfriend, Renita Ferdinand, 27, said she heard a shot and then “Duane came back up. Duane had a bullet in him and he told me, ‘I was shot, call the cops.’”
She said police officers soon surrounded him, pointing guns, demanding his idenity and asking if he lived there. He was taken to Brookdale University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later.
The case mirrors some aspects of the Dec. 12 murder of Figoski, the police officer who was shot by a suspect trying to flee a robbery of a supposed marijuana dealer.
In that case, the victim of the robbery wasn’t initially forthcoming with detectives, failing to tell them two men in the apartment when police interrupted a home-invasion robbery were not good Samaritans as they claimed. That incident unfolded in the same precinct, just two miles away.
Before Thursday’s fatal shooting, Duane Browne’s brother, Dale Ogarro, 31, had pulled his burgundy Chevrolet Tahoe SUV into the driveway of the building. When he got out of the vehicle, two gunmen who had been hiding in the shadows accosted him and demanded “where’s the money,” the police spokesman said.
Wearing hooded sweatshirts with scarves over their faces and latex gloves on their hands, the robbers pointed a gun into a small red pillow that was pushed against Ogarro’s head — a makeshift silencer, police said. Inside the SUV, Ogarro’s frightened girlfriend ducked down and made five 911 calls in quick succession, providing piecemeal information about the gunpoint abduction of her boyfriend.
Two police officers arrived and began using a powerful spotlight to look into cars, searching for the 911 caller who they were told was hiding in a red truck. She told them the two gunmen were still inside with her boyfriend, the police spokesman said.
By now the robbers had pushed Ogarro into his apartment and, after realizing police were outside, demanded to be shown another exit. The police spokesman said Ogarro led the men out a first-floor door on the other side of the house.
Then, according to police, Ogarro returned to the basement and emerged with his hands up. He told the officers he was fine but didn’t tell them that he had been robbed or that the gunmen had already fled the house, the police spokesman said.
Duane Browne, meanwhile, had been watching television with Ferdinand when he heard a commotion from the basement and left to investigate, police said. Ferdinand later told detectives that her boyfriend returned a short time later, said his brother was in trouble and then left again; police surmise he was retrieving his gun.
Moments later, Duane Browne walked out the basement door holding his unregistered Smith & Wesson .38-caliber gun and was confronted by police. The revolver had five bullets in it; a sixth matching bullet was found at the bottom of the basement stairs, police said.
Police found 11 baggies of marijuana and a weighing scale inside Ogarro’s apartment. His record includes several arrests for drug offenses, a law enforcement official said.
Detectives were still interviewing Ogarro on Friday afternoon.
Nolan Donovan, one of Duane Browne’s brothers, said that immediately after the shooting he was told by police that a robber shot his brother. Later at the hospital, another police official told him, “Unfortunately there’s a misunderstanding. It was an officer who shot Duane,” Donovan said.
With police barring people from the two-story brick row house while they gathered evidence Friday, family and friends gathered outside on a windy, cold day embracing each other while crying. As Duane Browne’s 7-year-old son stood at his side, Donovan described his brother as “a strong, young black man who was working to provide for his son and stay off the streets.”
Donovan said that his brother received his associate degree from Brooklyn’s ASA College in pharmaceutical technology and had a job with Epic Flooring. He said his brother was flipping through a Netflix menu, looking for a good movie, just prior to Thursday night’s shooting incident.
“He was an innocent young man,” Donovan said. “Words cannot express who was lost today.”
Um homem foi baleado e morto por policiais em East New York, ,  que estavam respondendo a uma chamada  relatando uma invasão casa na noite de quinta-feira (12). O falecido, de 26 anos de idade, Duane Browne, estava carregando um calibre .38 do revólver . A polícia acredita que ele estava respondendo aos homens armados que tinham entrado em sua casa.

Segundo a reconstrução da polícia de eventos, como o irmão de Browne, de 31 anos de idade Dale Ogarro, aproximou-se da casa na 943 Schenck Ave., ele foi abordado por dois homens armados que exigiram "where's the money!" ("onde está o dinheiro!"). Ele foi forçado a cave do edifício. Sua namorada em um carro próximo chamou 9-1-1 cinco vezes para relatar a invasão. Os ladrões fugiram quando a polícia se aproximou. Quando a polícia chegou, Ogarro relatou que estava ileso, mas não disse os ladrões haviam deixado ou seu irmão estava carregando uma arma. Browne saiu da casa através de uma porta traseira segurando o revólver ea polícia ordenou que ele soltá-lo. Quando ele não conseguiu fazê-lo, a polícia atirou nele.

A polícia encontrou 11 sacos de  e uma balança em um armário do porão. Segundo a polícia, Ogarro foi preso no passado por porte de drogas diversas, e com a arma que ele carregava era não registrados.

Em 12 de dezembro de 2011, o policial Peter J. Figoski foi morto enquanto respondendo a um assalto em uma casa nas proximidades.