The police officer who killed himself while on duty Thursday night had apparently been agitated. Terrence Dean, 28, had been interviewing car break-in victims in Hollis Hills, Queens, but he took a call from his fiancée and shot himself in the head shortly after. The Post reports that the fiancée was concerned about his state of mind and had actually called his precinct 15 minutes earlier: "The woman never mentioned [Dean] by name — and only asked vague questions about what happens to a cop who wants to kill himself and if he would lose his gun or be suspended. The 111th Precinct cop who fielded the anonymous call guessed that she was talking about Dean and told a supervisor — but they allowed him to respond to a car break-in before calling him in."
Apparently, the fiancée was freaked out when he pointed a gun at his head in front of her five-year-old child earlier in the afternoon: "She became more concerned when he refused to answer or return any of her phone calls during his shift, the sources said, and that’s when she finally placed a call to the 111th Precinct." According to the Post, the 111th Precinct officer who took the fiancée's call will not face any disciplinary action.
While responding to the break-in, Dean had been talking to Daniel Ben-Jacob about a radio and PlayStation stolen from his car when Dean received the call from his fiancée around 10:40 p.m. Ben-Jacob's brother told the Post, “My brother said to him, ‘Can you dust for prints?’ He [Dean] just brushed him off and said, ‘Can’t you see I’m on the phone?' And then he pulled out a gun and he pointed it first at my brother. And then he shot himself."
Dean was taken to Long Island Jewish Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. A colleague said, "He was a good cop. Guys liked to work with him."
