Local cops shot after chase

NYPD Officer Reddin, left the hospital on Tuesday to cheers to continue recovering after being shot in Brooklyn on Sunday, Feb. 21.

Courtesy NYPD

NYPD officers found this .357 revolver in the front seat of Jamal Funes's car following the car crash.

Courtesy NYPD

NYPD police officer William Reddin

NYPD police officer Andrew Yurkiw

NYPD

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Two NYPD officers from Nassau County were shot while in pursuit of a suspect in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn early last Saturday morning.

William Reddin, 33, a Lynbrook resident who grew up in Malverne, and Andrew Yurkiw, 29, a Wantagh resident and an Elmont native, heard gunshots near the intersection of Quincy Street and Malcolm X Boulevard. As they approached a suspect, Jamal Funes, 34, he pointed a gun at them and then fled in a Nissan Maxima, police said. The officers followed, and radioed for backup.

The suspect, driving the wrong way on Malcolm X. Boulevard, rammed into a patrol car at the corner of Lexington Avenue. After the collision, at around 3:20 a.m., officers fired at him, striking him several times, and both Yurkiw and Reddin were hit as well. Police later found a .357 revolver with five spent shell casings in the front seat of Funes’s vehicle.

Yurkiw was hit in the chest, but the bullet did not penetrate his bulletproof vest. Reddin was shot in the hip. Both were treated at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, and both are expected to make full recoveries, police said. Yurkiw was released from the hospital on Sunday, and Reddin was released from the hospital on Tuesday.

“The shooting of a police officer anywhere is a tragedy, and a crime against civil order,” said Lynbrook Mayor Bill Hendrick. “I pray that Officer Reddin — a member of the Lynbrook family — heals soon and returns home to his wife, children, and the community that is so proud of him.”

At a press conference on Saturday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio expressed his relief that the officers’ injuries weren’t more serious. “Thank God both these officers will be making a full recovery, and thank God for what they do for us,” he told reporters after he visited Yurkiw and Reddin at the hospital. “This morning is a reminder of the important, dangerous and crucial work that our police officers do.”