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Mr. Johnson, the commissioner said, was carrying a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun “in a bag under his arm.” Mr. Bloomberg said Mr. Johnson pulled out his gun on two officers who had confronted him “and tried to shoot the cops and kill the cops. They returned fire.” The two officers and Mr. Johnson were about eight feet apart. One law enforcement official said that based on the preliminary investigation, it appears that most or all of the bystanders were struck by one of the 16 police bullets – or fragments or ricochets from those rounds – that were fired by the two officers who confronted Mr. Johnson. Detectives believe that Mr. Johnson had fired five shots at Mr. Ercolino and may have fired one shot at the police officers, the official said. There were two bullets left in the eight-round magazine of his gun so only one shot – the one apparently fired at the officers — could have possibly hit one of the nine bystanders, the official said. One of the officers fired nine times and the other seven times.
