Wounded policeman comes home

Timothy Meyer

Just 10 days after he was shot in the head, NYPD officier Kevin Brennan returned to his home in Garden City Park on Friday and held his baby daughter.

“If you don’t believe in miracles – if you took a picture of my son and you saw my son and saw him walk out of that hospital, saw him go into that house, with his daughter – that’s a miracle,” Brennan’s father Dave told Newsday.

When he answered the door to his home Monday, Brennan said he has been asked by the NYPD not to speak to the press.

At the time, he was wearing a New York Giants jersey signed by New York Giants star defensive end Justin Tuck.

Tuck had given Brennan the jersey during a visit to Brennan’s home on Friday shortly after the 28-year-old officer returned home and a short time after Tuck had received the keys to the county from Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano at Umberto’s Pizzeria & Restaurant in New Hyde Park.

Accompanying Tuck was Mangano and Umberto Corteo, the founder of Umberto’s.

On the night of the Jan. 31 shooting, Brennan was one of three plain-clothed officers responding to shots fired in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. He chased one of the three men they saw running, Louis Ortiz into an apartment building.

Ortiz then allegedly shot Brennan in the right rear of the head with a .38-caliber handgun. The round penetrated the skin and lodged outside his skull, police said.

Ortiz, 21, has been charged with first-degree attempted murder and related felonies, If convicted on all counts, he could spend life in prison.

Brennan told Newsday that thinking about his newborn daughter is what helped him pull through.

As Brennan was released from the hospital last Friday he was greeted by NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, and dozens of cheering NYPD officers. After being brought out in a wheel chair, Brennan walked the final yards to a black sedan as he waved and smiled to the crowd.

The bagpipers played “Hard Times,” A civil war era song and “Rakes of Mallow, a traditional Irish song.

“He is essentially a whole human being after that experience, a miracle, and miracle continues as you saw him walk out the door,” Kelly was quoted as saying. “Anyone who saw it had to have a chill go through their body.”

Brennan, who now suffers head and neck discomfort plans to be an outpatient at a Manhasset rehabilitation facility.

Dr. Ronald Simon, the Bellevue surgeon who removed the bullet said Brennan suffered mild damage and a loss of some peripheral vision, but could fully recover.

“Considering everything – that the bullet didn’t go in or through or do some really significant damage.. [this] is not short of a miracle,” Dr. Ronald Simon told Newsday. “I have hopes his eyesight will return completely.”

 

 

 

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