The first bullets hit Chrispine Phillips in the chest, arm and head. As he fell fatally injured inside a crowded hookah bar in Brooklyn on Friday morning, the assailant ran for the door, shooting as he went.
“He was shooting to make a path, to make people get out of the way,” said a police official, who did not want to be identified because he was speaking about a continuing investigation.
Bullets hit two other young men and a woman who scrambled with others to escape the violence, which erupted at about 3am, the police said. Other patrons were injured as they pushed one another and fell in an effort to get out.
Hours later, detectives from the 71st Precinct were trying to piece together the chaos that unfolded at the Buda Hookah Lounge on Flatbush Avenue, reviewing surveillance footage from cameras inside the lounge, the police said.
Video footage showed a dispute, although the cause was not immediately clear, they said.
At one point, the gunman was sitting calmly in the lounge, the police said. Then, he got into an argument with Phillips, pulled out a handgun and opened fire, the police said.
Sean Johnson, an employee at the lounge, was in the basement grabbing supplies when the shots rang out. He was unable to hear anything over the loud music playing at the time, but saw a rush of people heading in his direction, he said.
“Imagine 50 people running down the stairs toward you,” Johnson said as he stood outside the lounge on Friday afternoon. “They were just looking for an exit.”
Johnson said he saw a body lying on the couch in the front.
“I did not want to look,” he said.
John Ali, the owner of Ali’s Roti Shop, which operates during the day at the same address, was in the kitchen when the shooting started.
“I just heard hookahs falling, from people trying to get out,” he said.
Investigators on Friday were canvassing businesses in the neighborhood, trying to find more video footage as they gathered clues about the shooting, the police said.
By late afternoon on Friday, the assailant had yet to be publicly identified, the police said.
The police did not immediately identify those wounded by gunfire: a 25-year-old man hit in the right foot; a 28-year-old man with a graze wound to the head; and a 25-year-old woman with wounds to her abdomen and right arm.
Phillips, 27, who was taken to Kings County Hospital and declared dead, had been shot on at least two prior occasions, the police said. He survived bullet wounds in September 2013, and again in November last year, the police said, though the details of those shootings could not be immediately determined.
The police said he had been arrested at least 10 times since 2010, including on charges of gun possession, assault, grand larceny and resisting arrest.
“He was not a perfect man, by any means,” his sister, Jasmine Phillips, said. “He had his flaws, but he tried.”
Friends and relatives gathered on East 43rd Street, in East Flatbush, and said Phillips was a good father who cared about his neighbors.
He grew up on the block, lived there with his girlfriend and young son, and sought to keep the area free from gangs and violence.
That was how he got his nickname, Batman. He sometimes paid for the neighborhood children to get treats from the an ice cream truck.
Akeem Walker, a childhood friend, said Phillips earned money by training dogs. He had mentioned wanting to open a hookah lounge of his own, which Walker said might explain why he was at the Buda Hookah Lounge.
Outside the lounge, shattered glass from the front window was strewn about, and inside, couches were overturned, and hookah pipes and empty cups littered the floor.
From behind yellow police tape, a 30-year-old woman, who said she usually spends Thursday nights at the lounge with friends, looked on in disbelief. On most weekend nights security guards are stationed at the door, she said.
“It is usually very calm and social here,” said the woman, Lisa, who refused to give her surname. “It is not the type of place to attract violence.”
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