By Michael Boren
The Philadelphia Inquirer
CUMBERLAND COUNTY, N.J. — The 76-year-old homeowner who was shot by a New Jersey state trooper responding to the wrong home two weeks ago has been released from Cooper University Hospital — with the three bullets from the trooper’s 9mm service handgun still lodged in him.
Doctors feared removing the bullets in Gerald Sykes’ body would cause further bleeding, said Sykes’ stepdaughter, Diana LaFalce. She said the bullets could be removed if they caused complications.
Sykes, she said, is still sore and weak, but is improving each day.
“The trauma that his body took, it’s amazing that he is doing as well as he is,” LaFalce, 56, said. “Truly.”
Sykes, who owns a communications company, and his wife, Margot, 80, a hairdresser, have stayed at LaFalce’s Clayton home since leaving the hospital Monday. Sykes was not available for comment Wednesday.
LaFalce said the couple plan to return this week to their home in Upper Deerfield Township, Cumberland County, where the shooting occurred July 29.
Just before 11:30 p.m., according to the family and their attorney, Rich Kaser, Margot Sykes saw shadowy figures on the back deck and got out of bed. She then awakened her husband, who walked to the living room and also saw the figures. Fearing they were intruders, he walked to the bedroom to grab a shotgun from the closet.
When he walked into the living room with the shotgun, he was hit by three bullets through the glass, Kaser said. Two bullets struck Sykes in the chest and one in the upper groin.
Sykes, falling backward, fired a shell before retreating to the bedroom bloodied and in a panic, Kaser said.
Kaser and Sykes’ family have said one of the troopers -- the second did not shoot -- fired first.
Authorities dispatched the troopers to Sykes’ home after mistakenly tracing to that location a disconnected 911 call in which the caller did not speak.
The state Attorney General’s Office, which is investigating the incident, has not said where the disconnected 911 call came from or who made it, or why authorities thought it originated in Sykes’ home.
The office, in an earlier statement, said troopers knocked on the home’s front door and heard no response, then approached a sliding-glass door in the back and knocked there, shining flashlights into the house and announcing they were responding to a 911 call.
Sykes’ family says neither he nor his wife heard knocks.
The names of the troopers who responded to Sykes’ home remain withheld from the public.
The Attorney General’s Office, which will determine whether the trooper who fired used justified force, released new guidelines last year that said authorities must disclose a summary of their investigative findings on a police-involved shooting, even if the case is not presented to a grand jury for an indictment.
But the disclosure is not required until a case is closed, which can take several months to more than a year. The guidelines also do not require authorities to release the name of an officer who opens fire, unless he or she is charged.
“This policy is intended to protect the safety of the officers involved and preserve the integrity of our investigation,” Peter Aseltine, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, said Wednesday. “Moreover, it recognizes the fact that we never identify the names of individuals who are the subject of a criminal investigation unless they are charged.”
Aseltine said he did not have new information on the disconnected 911 call. Sykes’ family has said it is considering legal action.