Opinion
April 20, 1987
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Farlo, J.).
Ordered that the judgments are affirmed.
Under the circumstances, the hearing court properly denied those branches of the defendant's omnibus motions which were to suppress the complainant Randall's immediate identification of the perpetrators at the scene of their apprehension and the inadvertent confirmatory identifications by both complainants at the police precinct.
The showup identification by the complainant at the arrest scene, which was in the vicinity of the crime scene and occurred immediately after the commission of the crime, falls within the recognized exception to impermissible showups. Although such procedures are less than ideal, they have been held to be acceptable in the interest of prompt identification when conducted shortly after the commission of a crime at a point in time when the victim's memory is still fresh (see, People v Love, 57 N.Y.2d 1023, 1024; People v Adams, 53 N.Y.2d 241, 249; People v Brnja, 50 N.Y.2d 366, 372; People v Soto, 87 A.D.2d 618, 619). This is particularly so in cases such as the present ones, given the proximity of the defendants' apprehensions in time and place to the scene of the crime. A speedy on-the-scene viewing of the suspects was an example of effective law enforcement insofar as it constituted a minimally intrusive means of investigation likely to confirm or dispel suspicion quickly (People v Hicks, 68 N.Y.2d 234). Moreover, the showup identification conducted in the instant case was free of any unnecessarily suggestive police influence (see, Stovall v Denno, 388 U.S. 293; cf., People v Adams, supra).
The station house identifications were not police-conducted identification procedures, but rather, were inadvertent and completely accidental viewings. An accidental or unarranged showup at the police station is not unnecessarily or impermissibly suggestive since such an event is unavoidable and is not attributable to any misconduct on the part of the police or prosecutor (People v Gonzalez, 61 A.D.2d 666, affd 46 N.Y.2d 1011).
In any event, inasmuch as the victims knew both the defendants from the neighborhood prior to the incident, the hearing court properly found an independent basis for their identifications (see, People v Jackson, 111 A.D.2d 411, 412).
Finally, the record clearly shows that the defendant Hampton's spontaneously uttered remark that "no one got shot" was not elicited in response to police interrogation. Rather than having been encouraged to make a statement by the police, Hampton volunteered his remark in the course of a conversation that he himself had initiated. Detective Besmer merely responded to Hampton's inquiry about the charges facing him, and cannot be held accountable for the unforeseeable, spontaneous statement made by this defendant (see, Rhode Is. v Innis, 446 U.S. 291). Mangano, J.P., Brown, Weinstein and Spatt, JJ., concur.