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A 46-year-old man is in custody after shots were fired inside Hispanos Unidos de Buffalo's Virginia Street methadone clinic Thursday morning.
Police say that while no one was injured inside the clinic, the suspect had allegedly come from another shooting where a 47-year-old woman was injured. Police believe the shootings to be "attempted robberies tied to drug activity" and did not appear to be planned.
"They [both shootings] were an attempted robbery seeking what we believe to be drugs," Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said in a press conference at 1:30 p.m. "There was, at this point, no other motive other than an attempted robbery."
Police first responded to a shots-fired call in the 100 block of Pennsylvania Street, where a woman had been shot in her leg/hip inside a residence. This happened just before 8:45 a.m.
Police say that the suspect from that shooting then went into the methadone clinic in the 200 block of Virginia Street where he fired one shot at a wall in the lobby using an AR-15-style assault rifle. Police received the call regarding this shooting just two minutes after the initial call on Pennsylvania Street.
"At that point, there was a security guard that was inside the small vestibule area. And this security guard heroically ran after the individual, grabbed ahold of the weapon and the individual, the suspect, and held on," Gramaglia said.
During the scuffle, police say the suspect's gun was discharged multiple times, but no one was injured. Gramaglia said a security officer came out from behind the clinic door to assist.
The two security guards were able to force the suspect outside, hold him to the ground, and separate him from the rifle until the police arrived.
The suspect was detained by police and the gun was recovered. Gramaglia said the gun had a detachable 30-round magazine, which is illegal in NYS. It was loaded with more than the 10 rounds allowed under the New York State SAFE Act, but Gramaglia did not state how many.