Construction worker shot in robbery on NYC sidewalk

Updated May 30, 2015
Police at the scene of the shooting. Credit: Jesse Ward/New York Daily NewsPolice at the scene of the shooting. Credit: Jesse Ward/New York Daily News

While operating a jackhammer on a New York City street corner, a construction worker was shot last week.

According to a report from the New York Daily News, 49-year-old Rafael Lugo was hammering a portion of sidewalk in Brooklyn when two men walked up to him and demanded he give them the gold chain he was wearing.

The paper reports Lugo tried to fight the men off before they shot him in the back, stole the chain and fled.

Paramedics responded to the scene and were able to rush Lugo to the hospital where he was placed in a medically induced coma for treatment.

New York Police Department officers were able to make arrests in the incident. Police told the Daily News they apprehended the two suspects in the shooting when they returned to the scene later that day.

U.S. jobsites have seen several shootings this year, many of them fatal. In March a Connecticut worker was killed by a man who briefly before the shooting had inquired about a job at the site.