Opinion
December 26, 1989
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Cohen, J.).
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.
We find no merit to the defendant's challenge to the hearing court's determination that his arrest was predicated on probable cause. The testimony at the suppression hearing established that within two minutes of receiving a radio call reporting a "purse snatch[ing]," which had occurred less than one half of a mile away, and a description of the perpetrator, the police officers observed a man who fit the description running alongside the Belt Parkway, an unusual place to find pedestrians. The officers were therefore justified in entertaining, at the very least, a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity (see, People v Allen, 141 A.D.2d 405, affd 73 N.Y.2d 378; People v Cordero, 140 A.D.2d 367). This reasonable suspicion ripened into probable cause to arrest when, as the officers exited the marked patrol car, the man suddenly accelerated and dashed across the highway, refusing to comply with the officers' command that he stop, and continued to run onto private property (see, People v Amarillo, 141 A.D.2d 551; People v Fulmore, 133 A.D.2d 169). Under the circumstances, the hearing court properly found that the defendant was lawfully arrested, thereby warranting denial of those branches of the defendant's omnibus motion which were to suppress his spontaneous statement and the physical evidence seized from him after his arrest.
Contrary to the defendant's further contention, we find that the complainant's testimony, that as a result of a struggle with the defendant over her pocketbook, she sustained a painful injury to her shoulder for which she sought treatment at a hospital and which caused her to endure "shooting pains" radiating to her neck for nearly a week thereafter, constituted legally sufficient evidence that the complainant suffered "physical injury" within the meaning of Penal Law § 10.00 (9) (see, People v Bogan, 70 N.Y.2d 860; People v Rogers, 138 A.D.2d 419; People v Ruttenbur, 112 A.D.2d 13). Mollen, P.J., Thompson, Lawrence and Eiber, JJ., concur.