Family: Man Fatally Shot By Police Was Mentally Ill
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) - The sister of a man who was killed by an NYPD officer after opening fire on the subway said he brother was mentally ill and should have been hospitalized
Peter Jourdan's sister Natalie told the New York Daily News that her brother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
Plainclothes officers Michael Levay and Lukasz Kozicki were shot multiple times while working undercover on the subway in Brooklyn on Thursday.
The officers approached Jourdan on a Manhattan-bound N train to give him a summons for passing from car to car, police said.
When they asked the man for identification, he stood up as if to cooperate but instead pulled a 9mm Taurus handgun from his waistband and opened fire, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
Kozicki was shot in each of his upper thighs and once in the groin. Levay was shot in the back, but was able to return fire and killed the gunman, Kelly said.
Jourdan, 37, of Allentown, Pa., had been arrested at least seven times, including once in Los Angeles for bringing a gun to court.
Jourdan's sister said her brother should not have been allowed to buy a handgun.
Natalie Jourdan and other family members gathered in Brooklyn on Saturday. They said Jourdan made at least a dozen trips to jails and hospitals but was routinely sent back to the streets.
Levay and Kozicki were both released from Lutheran Medical Center Friday.
In a separate incident also on Thursday evening, police officer Juan Pichardo was shot in the thigh while struggling with an armed robber at his family's car dealership.
Police said a pair of men had tied up the off-duty officer and threatened to kill him, but he escaped and grabbed the gunman.
Police said he managed to disarm the bandit, even after being shot.
Four suspects were arrested by officers responding to the scene.
Pichardo, 37, was released from Jacobi Medical Center on Saturday morning.
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