Subway Gunman Fires on Suspected Attackers

NEW YORK —  Police searched Sunday for a possible subway vigilante who returned to the Brooklyn station where he had been mugged, said: “Remember me?” to his suspected attackers and opened fire with a pistol.

Three of the suspected assailants were hit by gunfire as three others scattered and ran, said Al O’Leary, a spokesman for the Transit Police. Two of the shooting victims later were charged with robbery.

The gunman, dressed in white from cap to sneakers, fled the scene.

O’Leary said it was possible that the gunman was a vigilante but said detectives have no hard evidence of that.

“We have no reason at this time to believe he actively was seeking the muggers,” O’Leary said.

“We think it was happenstance that they came together again. It’s like the old saying: ‘What goes around comes around.’ ”

Different From Goetz Case

The incident involved a black gunman and black youths, unlike the 1984 incident involving Bernhard H. Goetz, a white electronics specialist who shot four black youths who he believed were about to mug him, in a case that fanned racial tensions in the city.

Goetz is serving a jail sentence for a weapons violation.

Police described the latest gunman as 17 or 18 years old, wearing eyeglasses, a long-sleeved white shirt, white pants, white sneakers and a white painter’s cap.

“He may find it in his best interest to surrender,” O’Leary said.

Police said a group of muggers had menaced the man with a hammer at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza subway station Friday night and allegedly robbed him of a gold chain and a bracelet.

The man returned to the station 24 hours later and caught sight of the men Saturday night at the entrance to the station.

“Remember me?” the man asked as the six youths approached the token booth, O’Leary said, citing the report of one of the wounded youths.

“He then turned away from the group and then turned back toward them--facing them with a 9-millimeter handgun--and opened fire,” O’Leary said.

David Godbole, 24, of Brooklyn, was wounded in the thigh. He was treated at Methodist Hospital and released.

A 16-year-old, also from Brooklyn, was wounded in the thigh and was treated at Kings County Hospital Center.

Godbole and the teen-ager later were arrested and charged with first-degree robbery and illegal possession of a weapon--the hammer.

An unidentified 15-year-old who was shot but escaped serious injury was being questioned as a witness in both incidents, O’Leary said.