The two police officers who were shot by a gun-wielding N train passenger on Thursday night were released from the hospital yesterday. Patrick Lynch of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association said, "We know that these police officers put themselves between a gun and those folks on that train. That's heroic. New York City police officers do that every day. We hear so often about the negative that may happen when things go wrong. This is the reality of what happens each and every day in New York City."
Officers Michael Lavay and Lukasz Kozicki were about to remove the passenger, who had been traveling between subway cars (which is illegal), from the train at the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop in Brooklyn, but the man, identified as Peter Jourdan, 37, took out a gun and fired at the cops. Kozicki was hit in the legs and groin and Levay in the lower back, but Levay managed to fire back at the Jourdan and kill him.
Jourdan's cousin, Angelo Maldonado, told NY1 that Jourdan suffered from mental illness and was "severely paranoid." He said that they would be looking into the incident, "Obviously he had a weapon. There's a lot of things we don't know. We're not detectives. We weren't there. And we're thankful that the police officers are safe and we're thankful they're alive and they can go back to their families, but our cousin is dead. Our family member is not around anymore, and I look at it as a child thrown in the middle of a highway. I mean, how's that baby going to defend for himself? How's he going to get to where he's got to go to when he's in a position where he can't really help himself?"
The shooting took place at 7:30 p.m., with many other passengers on the train (one was grazed by a bullet). One of the train's conductors, Denise Davis, told the Daily News about the gun fire. She said one woman begged her for help and asked to entered her conductor cab, "Please. Oh, God I'm so scared. Can I come in there with you?” And Davis said there was a little girl whose mother was hysterical, "The poor child, she was scared. She didn't know what was going on. She looked like she was in a state of shock."
