By Anna Phillips
The New York Sun
NEW YORK — In complete darkness and amid 5-foot waves, four members of the New York City Police Department’s Harbor Unit rescued a man from beneath an overturned fishing boat. Yesterday, the four were among 33 to be honored for their acts of heroism in life-threatening situations.
The department’s annual Medal Day is “the proudest day of the year for the NYPD,” Mayor Bloomberg said, but it is also somber, as most Medals of Honor - the department’s highest award - are given posthumously.
“Each year, Medal Day helps us answer the question: Just how far are New York’s police officers willing to go to protect this great city?” Mr. Bloomberg said. The answer: Far enough to lose their lives.
This year, three medals were given to the families of Detective Russel Timoshenko, 23, and auxiliary police officers Eugene Marshalik, 19, and Nicholas Pekearo, 28.
Timoshenko died last July when he and Detective Herman Yan stopped a car upon noticing its license plate belonged to a different vehicle. The car’s occupants shot at the detectives, killing Timoshenko and wounding Detective Yan.
Yesterday, Detective Yan was also awarded the Medal of Honor, which Commissioner Raymond Kelly said was a rarity in a department that usually bestows its highest honor only on the fallen.
Marshalik and Pekearo died last March in Greenwich Village when they chased a man after he killed someone in a restaurant in the area. The man turned and shot both officers, who were unpaid volunteers and didn’t have guns.
“In the heroic history of this New York City Police Department, the names Russel Timoshenko, Eugene Marshalik, and Nicholas Pekearo will live forever,” Mr. Kelly said.
Messrs. Kelly and Bloomberg each credited the honored officers with significantly lowering the city’s crime rate in recent years.
“This generation of police officers has written the comeback story of the greatest city in the world,” Mr. Kelly said.
The department awarded Police Combat Crosses to 17 members and Medals of Valor to 12 members, many of whom were shot and wounded while chasing suspects they thought were carrying illegal handguns.
In one case, a sergeant fired a single, well-aimed shot that killed the man who was pointing his gun inches from a lieutenant’s face. In another, a gunman who was being pursued in Crown Heights turned around as he was running and shot at several police officers. Within minutes, they had him trapped in an alley and surrounded on both sides by police, forcing him to give up and drop his gun.
The four members of the NYPD’s Harbor Unit who received Medals for Valor were detectives George Sichler, Thomas Stevens, and Francis Vitale, and officer John Purcell.
Detective Vitale, a diver for the Harbor Unit, said a call came in last October about a fishing boat that had flipped in the water when it ran directly into the towline strung between a tugboat and a barge. Only the boat’s tip could be seen floating above the water, and although a passing boat had already rescued the captain, his three friends were still trapped under the vessel.
Three detectives and one officer dove beneath the boat in two shifts to look for the victims.
“Honestly, we kind of assumed that we were dealing with people who were dead,” Detective Vitale said.
While attempting to remove a victim from the boat’s cabin, he felt a hand touch his shoulder in the dark and realized that one man had survived by staying in a small pocket of air in the cabin. Detectives Vitale and Stevens rescued the man, Steven Jackson of New Jersey.
Detective Sichler said that, if a wave had shifted the boat, it could have sunk and trapped the divers underneath it. Or, Detective Vitale said, a fishing hook could have pierced their rubber dry suits, flooding them and carrying them “right to the bottom.”
“We do a lot of interesting stuff, but this was by far the most interesting,” Detective Sichler said of the rescue.
Copyright 2008 The New York Sun