By Sabrina Tavernise And Michelle O’Donnell, The New York Times
A retired New York police lieutenant was shot to death yesterday afternoon in a quiet beach community on Long Island by a resident who resisted arrest and then fired a shotgun at the officer from a window of his house, the police said. The man then ran over the officer and was fatally shot by the police, they said.
The violence began about 3 p.m. in Oak Beach, after the retired officer, Richard Brooks, 44, who worked part time as a constable for the Town of Babylon, tried to pull over a resident, identified by the police as James Wilson, because he thought Wilson was intoxicated.
But Wilson, 40, who was driving a white sport utility vehicle across the Robert Moses Twin Causeway that connects Oak Beach to the mainland, refused to stop, said Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick of the Suffolk County Police Department.
A short car chase ended in Wilson’s driveway at 79 Hawser Drive. Wilson got out of his car, went into his house, and fired at Constable Brooks with a shotgun from a second-story window, Lieutenant Fitzpatrick said.
At least one bullet hit Constable Brooks in the chest, killing him, the lieutenant said.
Wilson then got back in his S.U.V. and, backing over Constable Brooks’s body, drove out of the driveway, the police said.
Meanwhile, other officers had arrived, after Babylon dispatchers called for help. They blocked the road with a patrol car, and Wilson veered around it, lodging his S.U.V. in a reedy area at the side of the road, according to a neighbor who saw the vehicle after the incident.
Another resident, Tom Canning, who came upon the confrontation as he was driving home from work, said police officers with drawn guns were shouting at Wilson to put his gun down.
Wilson, still armed, refused to surrender to the officers, the police said.
“They said: ‘Drop your weapon! Drop your weapon!’ ” Canning said. When Canning went into his house to check on his family, he said, “I heard a pop.”
Wilson was shot in the chest and died soon afterward at Stony Brook University Hospital, Lieutenant Fitzpatrick said.
Tom Morrison, who was watering his lawn at the time of the shooting, said the back hatch and one of the doors of Wilson’s car were open, and what appeared to be personal items were strewn across the road, including a red piece of clothing. He also said he saw a woman “with very blond hair hysterically talking to one of the police officers.”
Lieutenant Fitzpatrick said that Wilson was intoxicated but had no record of drunken driving.
The shootings shattered the afternoon calm at the Oak Island Beach Association, a shorefront development with about 70 houses that is part of Oak Beach, a municipality on a narrow strip of land off southern Long Island. Residents, many of whom said they knew Wilson, expressed disbelief at what he had reportedly done.
“I’m just in shock,” said Evelyn Scalise, who lives in the town and said she had attended a Christmas party held by Wilson several years ago. “It’s tragedy all around.”
Constable Brooks’s colleagues expressed their grief last night at his death. The constable lived in Amityville, where he volunteered as a firefighter, Lieutenant Fitzpatrick said. He had retired from the New York Police Department in 2002 after 20 years of service, law enforcement officials in New York said.
“Words can’t describe how I’m feeling,” said Tim Taylor, Babylon’s harbormaster and Constable Brooks’s boss.
Brooks worked one day a week as a constable, helping to police the waterways and three beaches in the area. He was uniformed, armed and was authorized to make arrests, the Suffolk County police said.
Other residents said that such violence was highly unusual for their tiny hamlet, where, according to James H. Harding, a resident since 1967, “there are no streets, you go by house numbers.”
“This is just unbelievable,” said Dawn Morrison, Ms. Scalise’s daughter. “It is usually so quiet. No one even knows of Oak Beach.”
Ms. Scalise described Wilson as a personable man who had moved into the community a few years ago. She said she thought he had married in the last two years.
“He’s been a very friendly guy,” she said by telephone from Oak Beach. “He has a gorgeous, palatial home. If you saw him in the road, he waved.”
Last evening, a small group of Oak Beach residents was marooned outside a police barricade, which blocked off a part of the municipality close to Wilson’s house.
“It’s certainly a scary thing, to think that you live in a small community and people have shotguns ready to go,” said Monika Camillucci, one of those waiting to return home.
In Amityville last night, well-wishers and relatives streamed into the Brooks’ small gray ranch house. “It’s a sleepy little beach community,” Canning said in Oak Beach. “This kind of thing never happens here.”