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A crew member of the TV show “Law & Order: Organized Crime” was shot dead Tuesday at a filming location in Brooklyn, leaving real-life New York City police officers to investigate the crime scene on set. of a program focused on fictional representations of his department.
Police identified the victim as Johnny Pizarro, 31, of Queens. He worked on the Law & Order program as a car park production assistant. Police said in an emailed statement that he was sitting in his car around 5:15 a.m. Tuesday when someone approached the car, opened the door and shot him in the neck and head. In local news footage after the incident, workers at the crime scene were seen photographing the interior of a red Honda Civic with the passenger door open.
He was taken to Brooklyn Woodhull Hospital, where he was pronounced dead around 6 a.m., police said, adding that no arrests had been made until Tuesday afternoon. A short, slender man dressed in a black sweatshirt was seen running from the filming location in the Greenpoint neighborhood, police said.
The surrounding area has one of the lowest homicide rates in New York City, according to police data from January 2021 to May 2022.
Neighbors told local media that with the filming location nearby, fictional crime scenes were nothing new. One resident, Janus Czuj, told the New York Post that he thought the filming scene was part of a set. “I didn’t think it was a real tragedy,” he said, adding that “he saw the tape and thought, ‘Oh, it’s a movie.’ But that was a real shooting.”
“Law & Order: Organized Crime” stars Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler, a fictional New York City police detective. Its third season opens in September.
NBC and Universal Television said in a statement: “We are very saddened and surprised to learn that one of our crew members was the victim of a crime this morning and has died as a result. We are working with the forces of the local order while continuing to investigate “.
Although it was unclear whether the murder was related to Pizarro’s role in the show or whether the assailant knew him, it was the last high-profile shooting death on a set since Halyna Hutchins, a director of photography, was killed on the set of the western. movie “Rust” last year.
In that shooting, which left another crew member injured, a pistol with live ammunition was fired inside instead of a round of skiing. The gun was fired at the hands of actor Alec Baldwin, who has denied pressing the trigger. In March, his lawyers argued that he should be protected from financial responsibility in the shooting.