In Photos: The Aftermath of the Brooklyn Police Shooting

"What the fuck is going on out there?" my roommate asked, peering down at the street from the bay window in our living room in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. I looked up from my laptop to see police lights reflecting off the walls. I suddenly became aware of the distant sound of police helicopters, which I later learned were responding to the "execution-style" shooting of two New York police officers.

It was still relatively quiet when I reached the street a few minutes later carrying my camera. Ismaaiyl Brinsley, the shooter, had just executed Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. The officers were sitting in their police cruiser near Mike's Pizza, a neighborhood restaurant.

NYPD officers have been stationed at the corner of Myrtle and Tomkins Avenues for several months in response to ongoing violence in the neighborhood. A man was stabbed to death just three houses down from ours back in September. The cops would often pop into Mike's to grab a slice when their shifts were over.

I asked a man slumped in his doorway what happened.

"This dude just shot two cops and ran into the subway," he said.

"You saw this happen?"

"Yeah," he replied.

By then, several people in neighboring apartments were coming down to the street to see what the fuss was about. Police cars soon flooded the street, and the number of onlookers swelled. The officers at the scene insisted that we move back to the sidewalk.

I headed down to the nearby Myrtle-Willoughby subway stop, where a new cluster of cop cars was forming. On the way, I overheard the reactions of my neighbors: a mix of disgust, fatigue, and apathetic mumbles. Some people cried out, but there was no crying.

As I reached the end of the block, the police had just finished taping off the street. Dozens of officers stood at the entrance to the subway. Ambulances arrived en masse. Someone was in the subway, and they were hurt. We didn't know that Brinsley had just shot himself.

Droves of reporters and photographers flocked to the scene, and the streets filled up with people. Nobody seemed to know exactly what was happening. Several paramedics circulated in and out of the subway while a gurney was prepared and situated outside of the entrance. A number of minutes passed. Several helicopters circled overhead.

Suddenly, a torrent of police officers and paramedics emerged from the subway entrance carrying a man — Brinsley — in what looked to be critical condition. I do not know if Brinsley was alive when I saw him, but the paramedics were doing their best to resuscitate him.

The onlookers jeered: "Stop trying!" "He's dead!"

Peering through the lens, I witnessed Brinsley's morbid visage in the moments before he was loaded onto the ambulance. The ambulance took off, and so did I.

Dramatic footage shows NYPD searching subway station for Brooklyn shooting suspect. Read more here.