A gunman attacked the home of an NYPD officer on Long Island in the early hours of Monday, spraying 30 bullets into the property and grazi...
A gunman attacked the home of an NYPD officer on Long Island in the early hours of Monday, spraying 30 bullets into the property and grazing her in the head in what police believe could have been a case of mistaken identity.
Nathaly Gomez Iglesias, 23, was sitting at home eating when the shots tore through her house at 2:30am in Brentwood, but luckily escaped serious injury.
Police suspect the gunmen were looking for her sister's boyfriend, who is believed to be a member of the MS-13 gang, The New York Daily News reports.
Gomez, who joined the police in 2019, was taken to South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore, where she was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
'The investigation has revealed the incident was not random,' said Suffolk County Police, in a statement on Monday.
Sources told the Daily News that the officer could now face disciplinary action following the gun attack if it emerges that she broke strict NYPD rules against associating with gang members and criminals.
Nathaly Gomez Iglesias, 23, had a narrow escape in the early hours of Monday when a gunman riddled her home with 30 bullets. She was sitting in the house eating at the time of the 2:30am attack, and her head was grazed by a bullet but she was not seriously harmed
The house was badly damaged in the wild attack.
At least one bullet shattered the glass on the front door, and another went through a front window, The Daily News reported.
More bullets pierced the mailbox, siding and brick on the front of the house and another blew out the window of a white sedan in the driveway.
Neighbors told how they were woken by the shots as they tore through the officer's home.
'We heard the shots, but we don't know anything more because we were sleeping,' said Iris Hernandez, 44.
She told The Daily News: 'At the beginning I did think they were shots, but there were so many that then I thought they were maybe fireworks.
'So that's what happened — we stayed there, really thinking they were fireworks. Only when I went to the bathroom I realized that all the police were here. It's worrisome.'
Gomez, seen holding her certificate, joined the NYPD in 2019 and is based at a precinct in Jamaica, Queens
The 23-year-old lived at the Brentwood house with her mother and her sister, who was dating a man reportedly known to be a MS-13 gang member
Gomez, stationed at the 103rd Precinct in Jamaica, Queens, lives with her sister and mother.
She told The New York Post she had nothing to say about the incident.
'I don't want to talk,' she said.
Suffolk Police confirmed the incident.
'Shots were fired into a home on Morton Street at approximately 2:30am,' Suffolk County police said in a statement.
'Multiple people were inside the home at the time, and an adult female was grazed by a bullet. The woman was treated at a local hospital and released.'
Long Island is known for its MS-13 violence.
The street gang formed in Los Angeles prisons in the 1980s, and spread back in El Salvador, where most of the senior leaders are now based.
In January The New York Times reported that MS-13 has been linked by federal prosecutors to more than 55 murders in New York City and Long Island in the last decade.
In mid January federal prosecutors in Brooklyn announced charges against the leadership of the transnational gang, with terrorism charges leveled against what they called the criminal organization's 'board of directors' — 14 of its highest-ranking leaders, most of them jailed in El Salvador.
By 2015, MS-13 had tens of thousands of members in more than 200 different groups in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, the United States and elsewhere, the indictment said.
The group's members also trafficked drugs, extorted individuals and businesses and wired the proceeds from their crimes back to MS-13 members in El Salvador, the indictment charged.