BROOKLYN — Investigators may never know who shot an NYPD officer wounded in a shootout with an ex-con, who was arrested previously for assaulting another officer, in Bedford-Stuyvesant Saturday morning, sources said.
The plainclothes officer, William Reddin, 33, was hit in the hip by several bullet fragments while he and his partner, Andrew Yurkiw, 29, were in a gun battle with Jamal Funes, 34, police said.
Police initially approached Funes near Quincy Street and Malcolm X Boulevard about 3:20 a.m. after hearing a gunshot nearby, officials said. He pointed a gun at them and fled to Lexington Avenue where he crashed into a marked police car, sparking the gunfight, officials said.
Investigators are reviewing the bullet fragments, but doubt they'll be able to tell whose gun it came from and whether he was shot by Funes or another officer, sources said.
Reddin was still in being treated in Kings County Hospital Monday morning, an NYPD spokeswoman said.
Yurkiw, who was also treated at Kings County Hospital, but was released over the weekend, took a bullet to the chest, which was covered by a bulletproof vest, sources said. Investigators matched that bullet to the suspect's .357 revolver which they found on the front seat of his car along with five shell casings.
Funes, who grew up in Chicago and also uses the first name Frederick, was struck by several police bullets and listed in critical condition at Brookdale Hospital, officials said.
The suspect, who sources said is bipolar and lives in New Jersey, was arrested on charges of attempted murder of a police officer, assault on a police officer, criminal possession of a weapon, menacing and reckless endangerment, an NYPD spokesman said.
Funes was arrested 11 times in Chicago between 1996 and 2000, sources said. He's also been arrested in North Carolina, sources said.
In New York, he was arrested for assaulting a woman in August 2002 and again for hitting a child with a belt in February 2006, sources said.
He was arrested after trying to take a gun from an NYPD officer in July 2007, sources said. He pleaded guilty that December and served the next 20 months behind bars, according to records and a spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney's office.
He was released from prison in July 2009 and on parole for the next year, records show. He was arrested that December for having pirated DVDs, sources said.
