By Shaila K. Dewan, The New York Times
A New York City police sergeant shot and killed a man in the driveway of a suburban Queens home early Friday after the man, a paroled felon, attacked a lieutenant and took his gun, the police said. The gun discharged during the struggle, and the sergeant most likely believed that the lieutenant had been shot, the police said.
The shooting came two weeks after a pair of detectives in Brooklyn were killed with one of their own guns during a confrontation with a suspect. The suspect, Marlon Legere, was arrested and charged in their deaths.
Yesterday, two officers were on guard, with their guns drawn, as they approached the suspect, David Guzman, 33, after a car chase. Mr. Guzman had led the police from Corona to Nassau County and back into eastern Queens, where he pulled into a driveway on 246th Street, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said.
Mr. Kelly said it was far too early to make any pronouncement about whether the shooting appeared to be justified under department guidelines.
The chase began about 3 a.m. when Mr. Guzman, who was driving a 2004 Mercury Mountaineer, stopped to get gas at an Exxon station in Corona, where he was a regular customer, the station owner said. A female passenger was in the car
But Mr. Guzman was nervous because he saw a police car across the street, said the owner, Blessington Schellenberg. Mr. Schellenberg was not there at the time but was relaying the account of the manager on duty, who told him that Mr. Guzman had been argumentative, claiming the gas station had ripped him off, and that he waited for the police car to leave before leaving himself. The police car followed, Mr. Schellenberg said.
The police said the officers suspected that the car, which had Nevada plates, was stolen. The call went out on the radio, and the lieutenant, who was at the nearby 115th Precinct station house, heard the call. A police union official identified the lieutenant as Andrius Bagazunas, an officer in the Queens North Auto Larceny Unit. He and the sergeant, who is in the precinct’s anticrime unit, joined the pursuit.
While his passenger pleaded with him to stop, the police said, Mr. Guzman remained silent. He ran red lights, took one-way streets in the wrong direction and sped through Queens, they said. “He’s not looking at her, he’s not talking to her, he’s just going,” one police official said.
Later, the police found a small amount of cocaine and a bottle of Hennessy Cognac in the Mercury, they said. The woman rented the car at Kennedy International Airport in June and had not returned it on time, but it had not officially been reported stolen, the police said.
After about half an hour, Mr. Guzman pulled into a long driveway on 246th Street in Bellerose, Queens, and got out. The police say the house, whose unkempt, trash-filled yard distinguished it from the rest of the neatly groomed lawns on the block, was occupied by a woman who had been babysitting Mr. Guzman’s 3-year-old child for about two weeks.
The lieutenant pulled in behind him, got out of the car, approached with his gun drawn and told Mr. Guzman to stop, Mr. Kelly said. The officers were in plain clothes and an unmarked car, but the car had a flashing red light on the dashboard and the lieutenant was wearing a police gun belt and displayed his shield on a chain around his neck.
But Mr. Guzman, who the police believe was unarmed, grabbed the gun and used what the police described as a judolike move to knee the lieutenant in the groin. The officer also was bruised on the chin, stomach and leg, and received a bite mark on his shooting arm, officials said. The chain holding the lieutenant’s shield was torn from his neck.
“The lieutenant was in a fight for his life, this was an actual fight-for-his-life situation,” said Tom Drogan, the vice president of the Lieutenants Benevolent Fund. The female passenger, whose name the police did not release, told investigators that she was frightened and stayed crouched in the passenger seat, seeing nothing of the fight.
During the struggle, the gun went off, the police said, and Lieutenant Bagazunas fell to the ground, yelling, “He’s got my gun.” Mr. Guzman began to turn toward the sergeant, who fired repeatedly while backing away, the police said. The police believe the bullet from the lieutenant’s gun may have hit Mr. Guzman in the abdomen. The sergeant fired eight times, but the police said yesterday that they did not yet know how many rounds hit Mr. Guzman.
As backup officers arrived, the sergeant said, “Get me an address, the lieutenant’s been shot,” according to the police. A call went out over the radio that an officer was down.
The lieutenant, who it turned out had not been shot, was treated at a hospital for minor injuries.
The police said they pieced together their preliminary account of the shooting from evidence at the scene, witnesses, and statements made by the officers involved, who had not yet been formally interviewed.
The lieutenant and sergeant are both veteran officers with clean records, Mr. Kelly said. Neither had been involved in any previous shooting.
Mr. Guzman had several aliases, including David Rodriguez, Chino Rodriguez and David Pipaso, the police said. He had been arrested six times on charges including gun possession, assaulting a police officer, robbery, and attempted murder, and served time in prison for robbery, possession of a forged instrument and criminal mischief. He also had numerous driving violations, and his license had been suspended 29 times.
Corey Kilgannon and Janon Fisher contributed reporting for this article.