The ex-con shot and killed Thursday after he pulled a gun on two undercover cops was an unmedicated schizophrenic, according to his aunt, who says carrying firearms “was part of his disease.” "It was his paranoia," she explained; the gallon-sized bag of marijuana found in his backpack—along with two wallets (not his) and a second weapon—probably didn’t help with that. Meanwhile, police chief Ray Kelly praised the female NYPD officer who jumped from the passenger seat to intervene as Michael Romero struggled with her partner, saying she acted “fast, courageously and professionally.”
The two plainclothes cops were out looking for a man who’d fired a pellet gun at a pedestrian in Sunset Park, when they spotted Romero and asked for his ID. Dropping his hat on the ground to distract them he pulled out his gun. “You want some of this?” he yelled according to the Daily News, before pulling the trigger. Luckily one chamber was empty so Officer Tara Hayes was able to shoot the crazed man before he killed her partner, reports the Post. "If I saw her I would probably cry," said Eileen Kelleher, mother to Officer Sean Kelleher. "She saved my son's life."
But Romero’s aunt thinks the officers used unnecessary force against the gunslinger, who had 34 prior arrests on his record. "With all those cops, couldn't they have just tackled him? He didn't shoot anyone," she said, adding that her nephew “was good, but he was sick.”
