Posted on 10/26/2010 4:30:23 PM PDT by neverdem
Firearm used by suspect Winston Cox during a shoot out with Feris D. Jones.
The fearless off-duty cop who faced down an armed robber in a Brooklyn beauty parlor on Saturday managed to shoot the pistol right out of the crook's hands, cops said Monday.
And in a scene that would be over the top even for the most ridiculous Hollywood cop movie, one of Officer Feris Jones' bullets hit the front door - and locked it.
It was the first time Jones had fired her weapon in the line of duty in 20 years on the job.
"Her reserve under fire was matched only by her marksmanship," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a police-only briefing, according to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
As police offered up dramatic new details about the shootout, the suspected gunman's mom told the Daily News she was shocked her parolee son was mixed up in it.
"I can't come to grips with it," said Cheryl Cox, whose 19-year-old son, Winston Cox, the youngest of her eight kids, was arrested about 1 a.m. on Monday after more than 30 hours on the run.
"I just thank God that the person involved did not get hurt - that he didn't hurt anybody."
Jones, 50, who got her hair done at Sabine's Hallway on Franklin Ave. about once a month, had just sat down in one of the tiny salon's three chairs when the baby-faced bandit burst in Saturday evening.
"This ain't no joke! This is a robbery! I will kill you!" he barked.
Cox herded four women - owner Sabine Bellevue, an employee, another customer and Jones - into a cramped bathroom at the back of the 7-foot-wide store and started rifling drawers for money, authorities said.
Jones, an emigrant from Barbados who has worked in NYPD evidence collection for the past dozen years, never lost her cool.
She pulled out her handgun, held it stealthily behind one jeans-clad leg, and told the other women to lie on the floor, Browne said.
Grace under pressure
She stepped out of the bathroom into the salon, took aim at Cox from just 12 feet away, identified herself as a cop and told him not to move.
Cox, who was born a month after Jones joined the NYPD in 1990 and was on parole from a drug bust in Vermont, didn't listen, authorities said.
Holding his Ruger .44-caliber magnum revolver with both hands, he fired four shots. Two bullets narrowly missed Jones. One plugged the bathroom wall behind her.
Browne said the women in the bathroom might have been killed had Jones not told them to hit the deck.
Unfazed, Jones coolly used her own NYPD-issued Smith & Wesson five-shot pistol to shoot the gun right out of Cox's hands.
She hit his right middle finger and grazed his left hand, cops said.
One of the shots hit the knob of the automatic lock on the front door, disabling it and trapping Cox, Browne said.
"Open the door! Open the door!" he screamed, cops said.
He escaped by kicking out the glass on the lower portion of the door and crawled out to the street on his hands and knees, leaving a trail of blood.
When Cox was arrested in a single-room-occupancy hotel on Pacific St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant early Monday, he answered the door meekly, his bloody hands wrapped in Bounty paper towels borrowed from his mother, Browne said.
"She shot me in the hand," Cox whined, police said.
Cox, who has been charged with attempted murder and robbery, has five prior arrests in New York for assault, robbery and burglary and did time for drug dealing in Vermont. He made parole in June.
A 19-year-old girl who apparently helped Cox get into the locked salon was being held as "a witness," Browne said.
In other words, she missed and hit his hand. But the way this is worded, it’s going to have all the progressives trying to force the police into this absurd “shoot the gun out of his hand” standard of behavior.
Whine is the correct word. I'm sure she wasn't trying to do that and he's danged lucky he's alive to whine.
Kudos to officer Jones.
Yep. Either a lucky shot (and violated her training) or a lucky miss. Still, good outcome.
Cowgirl Action Hero.
The perp got off four shots before she fired her gun. I hate to say it, but she was very lucky she wasn’t killed.
It came out well, but I’d say that was sheer, blind luck. At least she had the sense to get the others down on the floor first.
Sounds like he was facing her, with the revolver out in front... means it was a good center-mass shot. That she hit the gun and disarmed him just means he had another chance at not dying.
Hitting the lock on the door, locking it... is just hysterical. That’s gonna be a story they’ll tell for years.
Still... she should get to the range more often than once in 20 years.
Annie Oakley II
“In other words, she missed and hit his hand.”
That was my take too. Someone with a 44 is shooting at you, you put as many in the chest as you can as quickly as you can. She was very lucky.
Wow! Way to go officer! I can not believe that she was promoted! I thought she would be fired for acting so quickly and wisely.
Who in the hell wrote that.....?
What a joke.
In other words, she missed and hit his hand...
Yes that is right. She also hit the door knob. My wife read me this article this morning in amazement and was disappointed when I explained the reality of the situation.
I also brought up the off duty security guard in a drugstore recently where a guy with a shotgun and ski mask came in.
The guard shot the shotgun out or the hand of the perp who had the bead on him with the shotgun. The bullet actually was lodged in the barrel of the shotgun.
In both cases the cops were aiming at the threat and happened to make some very unlikely shots.
The perp had a single action?
I wonder if she’s getting calls from Leno, Letterman, Fallon, etc. to do shooting exhibitions on TV. I’d stay up to watch that.
She was aiming for his head.
It's likely an easy target identification mistake to make.
I hope Kelly sends her to the range for remedial training it could save a brave womans life down the line.
Kudos to the police officer, but what the hell was this scumbag doing on the streets anyway?
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