NYPD cop shot in Lower East Side

A NYPD cop was shot during a confrontation with a gunman early Thursday -- spared life threatening injury by his bullet-resistant vest, police said.

The officer, wounded about 3:50 a.m. at a housing project on the Lower East Side, is in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital.

The shooter, described as a 20-year-old black man with corn rows and wearing red shorts, is still being sought. Cops flooded the area, searching on foot and in helicopters.

The shooting happened on the 20th floor at 64 Essex St., a building in the Seward Houses.

A woman who lives on the 23rd floor heard four shots that she initially mistook for fireworks. Concerned for her son, who had gone to McDonald's, the woman, Evette, raced out of the building.

"When I got down to the lobby the cop was sitting against the wall with his legs stretched out,'' she said. "He was talking. They had already took his shirt off."

Cops were everywhere.

"There were about 12 cops standing around him and the stretcher was already there. I didn't see no blood. He kept complaining about pain in his side."

The shooting occurred during span of five hours in which 15 other people were shot, two of them fatally.