An off-duty police officer who got into a shootout with an armed robber as the officer was getting her hair done in a beauty salon in Brooklyn on Saturday night shot the gunman’s revolver out of his hands, police officials said on Monday.
A suspect, Winston Cox, 19, was arrested early Monday at a hotel in Brooklyn, the police said. Following a blood trail and using bloodhounds, the police said, detectives were initially led to the home of the suspect’s mother, where officers found a black bag containing the suspect’s revolver and a bullet fired by the officer, Feris Jones.
When investigators found Mr. Cox about 1:20 a.m. on Monday at a hotel on Pacific Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, he answered the door with paper towels wrapped around his wounds, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. Mr. Browne said Mr. Cox told the officers, “She shot my hands.”
Mr. Cox had been arrested five times previously, including once for assault, the police said, although the record of any convictions was not available. He was paroled in June in Vermont after having been convicted of possessing a controlled substance.
The shootout in the beauty salon began about 6:30 p.m. Saturday, when the gunman burst into Sabine’s Hallway in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Mr. Browne said. “This ain’t no joke,” the man shouted, waving a .44-caliber Magnum revolver. “This is a robbery. I will kill you.”
The gunman ordered the four people there — the proprietor, an employee, Officer Jones and another customer — to place their belongings in a black bag, the police said. He then ordered them into a bathroom in the back while he searched the shop for more worth stealing.
In the bathroom, Mr. Browne said, Officer Jones pulled out her revolver. She whispered to the other three women to lie down and gave the proprietor her cellphone and told her to call 911. Then she stepped out of the bathroom, identified herself as a police officer and ordered the robber to drop his gun, the police said. He refused and opened fire from about 12 feet away, Mr. Browne said, shooting four times in quick succession.
One bullet whizzed past Officer Jones’s head. She fired back, emptying her five-shot revolver. One shot knocked the gun from the man’s two-handed grip, piercing his right middle finger and grazing his left hand, according to the police. Another shot hit the lock on the front door, jamming it. The gunman tried to flee, Mr. Browne said, but could not get the door open. Finally, he grabbed his gun, kicked out a lower panel on the door and crawled out. Officer Jones followed him out the door to see which way he was running.
Mr. Browne said Officer Jones’s performance was commended at an internal police briefing by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who said that “her reserve under fire was matched only by her marksmanship.”
Officer Jones, a native of Barbados, joined the department in 1990 and has worked the past 12 years in the evidence collection unit in the crime lab. It was the first time she had fired her gun in the line of duty, Mr. Browne said.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Tuesday, October 26th 2010 at 10:36PM
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