Two cops are shot by spear-wielding lunatic

Bradley Hope:

Two city police officers are lucky to be alive after a wild shootout early yesterday with a gunman.

The shooter, who has a history of psychiatric problems, was trying to blow off the head of a statue of St. Anne in front of a Queens Village church. As the officers stepped out of their patrol car, he blitzed them from behind at close range with a pump-action shotgun, police said.

The officers were responding to 911 calls about shots being fired in front of the Saints Joachim and Anne Catholic Church where the assailant, identified by police as Kevin Davey, 25, was attempting to decapitate a statue of St. Anne with a 12-gauge shotgun, police said.

Both officers were rushed to Long Island Jewish Hospital and listed in critical, but stable condition. One officer, Dominic Romano, 29, was hit with buckshot in the back of the head and eight times in the back, police said. A single pellet entered his brain behind his right ear, but did not cause significant damage, police said.

The officer's bulletproof vest saved his life, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a press conference with Mayor Bloomberg at the hospital later in the morning, holding up the riddled vest. The other officer, David Harris, 40, was struck in the leg at least five times, shattering his femur bone, police said. He was also shot in his left arm.

Despite sustaining debilitating wounds, Mr. Harris managed to shoot the assailant four times, Mr. Kelly said. Paramedics brought Mr. Davey to Mary Immaculate Hospital in Queens, where he was listed in stable condition with bullets in his right arm, shoulder, ankle, and side, police said.

Mr. Davey, who police said has a sealed criminal record and a history of psychiatric problems, began chipping at the statue of St. Anne with a spear in front of the church at 217th Lane and Hollis Avenue around 1:30 a.m. yesterday. When he couldn't get the head off with the spear, he took a pump-action shotgun with a pistol grip from his car and began firing repeatedly at the head, successfully decapitating the statue with three shots.

According to police, a witness watching from across the park said he saw the assailant reload his weapon and come running behind the officers as they stepped out of their patrol car, firing repeatedly with the shotgun.

A man on crutches, Tyrone Murphy, found the officers bleeding near their car. Mr. Kelly said that the man took off his own shirt and used it as a tourniquet on Mr. Harris's badly injured leg.

"We are reminded again how perilous police work can be and how the danger can erupt unpredictably," Mr. Kelly said. "These officers are lucky to be alive."

Thirteen spent shell casings, a spear, a tire iron, and a shotgun were found on the scene, police said.

The pastor of the church, Monsignor Joseph Malagreca, told the congregation at a 10 a.m. Spanish-language homily yesterday about the incident, the church's director of religious education, Teresa Rosero, said. He reassured the mixed congregation of Haitians, West Indians, Africans, and Hispanics that the statue would either be repaired or replaced very soon, Ms. Rosero said.

"I felt a lot of pain when I heard about it," she said. "What it says to me is that he is angry at the church or the saint. It's a very important statue. Whenever we have events, we all take pictures around it."

The tall white-stone statue, which sits surrounded by hedges in a grassy area in front of the church, has been with the parish since it was first built in 1896. It followed the church from its old location near Queens Village station, when the parish was the main Catholic church in the area, to its new location on Hollis Avenue.

The head of St. Anne was cleanly blown off by the shooter yesterday, but one 40-year veteran parishioner of the church, Tony Quinones, 66, said he was much more worried about the injured police officers.

"We treasured this statue. This was the original statue from the original church," he said. "But for me, I was more shocked when I heard about the policemen."

Mr. Bloomberg said at the press conference that he had visited Mr. Romano in his hospital room and that the three-year veteran of the police department was in good spirits. Mr. Davis, who has also been with the department for three years, was still in surgery while the mayor was visiting, but the mayor assured the officer's wife that both officers and their families would be getting invitations for dinner at Gracie Mansion, he said.

"We are so lucky that they are going to live and they are going to be okay," Mr. Bloomberg said. "This could have been so much more tragic."

The mayor also took the opportunity to explain how dangerous guns were to police officers patrolling the city's streets, and called on Congress to make gun restrictions tighter.

"We have more guns in the hands of the people than we have of people in the country," he said. "Guns kill people. We should get them off the streets."

According to Nicole Navas, a spokeswoman for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, Mr. Davey's arraignment proceedings hadn't begun yesterday afternoon because he was still asleep at the hospital and hadn't been officially arrested yet.

He faces charges of attempted murder in the first degree, criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, and criminal mischief as a hate crime, Ms. Navas, said.

If convicted on all charges, he faces 25 years to life in prison, she said.

The shooting is the fourth serious attack on police officers this summer and the second in Queens Village over the last two months. On July 6, two police officers were wounded in a gunfight with a man armed with two handguns in East Harlem. On June 14, at the edge of a baseball diamond in Queens Village, a police officer was shot in the leg with his own gun by a man who was resisting arrest for possession of marijuana. On June 8, a police officer was saved by his bulletproof vest in East New York after a man he had stopped with his patrol car pulled out a gun and shot him three times in the stomach.

Mr. Kelly said the men were extremely lucky because they expected to recover from their wounds fully.

"Really, it's a miracle, if you look at the nature of the wounds and weaponry they were up against," Mr. Kelly said.

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