The Associated Press
WATERTOWN, N.Y. (AP) - A police officer was charged Thursday with attempted murder and kidnapping after he allegedly shot another man while off duty and eluded capture for nearly 24 hours.
Watertown Police Officer Michael Van Waldick surrendered without incident at about 11 p.m. Wednesday at his father’s home in Rodman, about 70 miles north of Syracuse.
Van Waldick, 26, a police officer since January 2002, was not armed when he surrendered. He was charged with second-degree attempted murder, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree burglary and ordered held without bail.
State and local police launched a search for Van Waldick early Wednesday after he allegedly shot Ryan Dorr several times with a handgun in Dorr’s Watertown apartment. Dorr was in critical condition Thursday at Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, where he was taken for emergency surgery.
At news conference early Thursday morning, Watertown Police Chief Robert Piche said he and other members of the force were stunned by the events.
“Obviously, it’s upsetting to the members of the department that one of our own is involved in something like this,” Piche said. Van Waldick “had a good sense of humor and seemed to have a good head on his shoulders,” the chief said.
The shooting occurred shortly before 1 a.m. Piche said Van Waldick used a handgun that wasn’t his service revolver.
Van Waldick fled with a woman police identified as a former girlfriend. According to the Watertown Daily Times, Jessica Quinta was later released unharmed at the home of a friend of Van Waldick’s who lives near Watertown.
Piche declined to say what the relationship was, if any, between Dorr and Quinta, and didn’t comment on reports that Van Waldick had confronted Dorr at a restaurant several days earlier and threatened to kill him. Dorr and Quinta both worked at the restaurant.
Sources told the Watertown newspaper that Van Waldick, wearing a bulletproof vest, scaled a ladder and shot into a window at Dorr’s apartment, then climbed inside and fire more shots. The paper reported that Dorr was hit five times.
Van Waldick, a patrolman, was recently put on light-duty status because of a thumb injury, Piche said. A 1997 high school graduate, Van Waldick worked as a Jefferson County corrections officer from December 1999 to August 2001.
Van Waldick’s father is a former Watertown police officer who retired in 1991.