Migrant Teen In Times Square Shooting Arrested: NYPD

NEW YORK CITY — A 15-year-old migrant from Venezuela is the shoplifter who shot a woman in a Times Square store and opened fire at a cop, police said.

Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa, 15, was arrested Friday afternoon in Yonkers — not quite 24 hours after the harrowing incident in the tourist hotspot, police officials said.

The arrest came after a desperate manhunt to capture the shooter, who was presumed armed and dangerous, a $13,500 reward and amid simmering concerns over public safety as thousands of asylum seekers flow into the city.

"The shooting incident last night in Times Square was way beyond reckless," said NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban.

"Considering where these shootings took place, it's an actual miracle that we will not have a very different conservation right now."

The shooting left a tourist from Brazil — a woman, 38 — with a bullet in her leg, police officials said. Cops chased the boy through busy Midtown streets, where the shooter fired off rounds at a police officer chasing him, authorities said.

The incident began unfolded about 7 p.m. when a security guard inside a JD Sports store at Broadway and West 41st Street stopped three young men she suspected of shoplifting a jacket, said Jason Savino, an assistant chief in the NYPD's detective bureau.

As the security guard yanked away a bag of suspected stolen merchandise, one young man dressed in all white pulled a .45-caliber gun and fired toward her, police officials said.

He missed the guard, but struck the Brazilian in the left knee, Savino said. She was treated at and released from Bellevue Hospital for a non-life-threatening injury, he said.

The shooter and another suspected shoplifter ran off, prompting a chase with police, Savino said. One officer managed to capture a 15-year-old boy, while the shooter continued hoofing it toward 47th Street and Sixth Avenue, police said.

The shoplifter then turned around and shot twice at an NYPD officer, said NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell.

"He draws his weapon but he cannot fire, too many people around," Chell said about the officer.

The shooter then ran into a nearby subway station, where he scrambled on the tracks before coming back out, Chell said. Cops lost track off him somewhere after he left the subway, he said.

Chell said Friday that cops not only arrested a third suspect in connection to the shoplifting, but had identified the shooter as Rivas-Figueroa.

Rivas-Figueroa hails from Venezuela and lived in a migrant shelter set up in a West 70th Street hotel since he arrived in the U.S. during September, Chell said.

"Our 15-year-old shooter is also a suspect in an armed robbery, Jan. 27, in The Bronx at gunpoint," he said.

"I can reveal to you now, also, he's a suspect in a shots fired job in Midtown North behind me, where .45-caliber shell casings were recovered," Chell said. "Those shell casings will attempted to be matched up to the shell casings from last night."

City officials, including those with the NYPD, have consistently argued against overstating migrants' threat to public safety.

"We're not going to broad brush a whole migrant community as being bad people," Chell said.