Posted on 04/27/2007 6:42:05 PM PDT by neverdem
The bullet that killed a New York state trooper during a shootout Wednesday morning in a farmhouse in the Catskill Mountains came from the gun of a fellow officer, not the suspect they had cornered, the state police said yesterday.
The police said that the suspect, who was hiding in the house after shooting another trooper the day before, fired one bullet at the slain trooper, David C. Brinkerhoff, but that it hit his body armor. That bullet knocked Trooper Brinkerhoff onto one knee. He was then struck once in the head, fatally, during the fusillade of bullets that followed from three other troopers.
“As you can imagine, this new information is a source of great consternation and sadness,” Preston L. Felton, the acting superintendent of the state police, said in a news conference in Albany. “While it is clear that something went wrong, nothing can detract from the bravery and dedication of the men who entered” the house.
The state police also said that the suspect, Travis D. Trim, a 23-year-old college dropout from North Lawrence, N.Y., appeared to have died during the gunfight, having been shot once in the face and twice in the chest — not when the house went up in flames Wednesday night after being surrounded by scores of heavily armed police officers for most of the day.
Mr. Trim, who had a minor criminal record, was armed with a rifle and a handgun when the troopers encountered him on the second floor of the house about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. He had apparently broken into the unoccupied house, on a country road at the edge of Margaretville, N.Y., a tiny village, to hide after shooting a trooper, Matthew Gombosi, in the chest during a traffic stop on Tuesday afternoon. Trooper Gombosi, who was wearing a...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Thanks for following that up. I was just thinking of doing that now that things have settled down some.
How sad. I’ll bet his fellow trooper feels terrible. I sure hope he doesn’t go and do something rash himself.
Where is the NY Slimes calls for gun control of the State Troopers???
Oh thats right, the police and gov’t are the only ones who know how to handle firearms ... and the only ones who should own them (outside of the Slimes report’s bodygaurds).
I guess it is time to take guns out of the hands of the State Troopers and the military. All they seem to be able to do is damage to their own comrades.
/sarc... of course... I’m not a liberal.
I don’t know much about this incident, I do no it’s not an uncommon occurence, if a suspect suddenly drawa a weapon, there’s the “oh crap” factor.
This right on the heels of the announcement that the 92 year old woman murdered during a police home invasion hadn’t actually tagged any of them - all three cops injured in the raid had managed to shoot themselves or each other.
More practice with the real guns, less with the radar guns please.
I don't know about state troopers in NY, but I used to work for the City of Atlanta police -- back in the days before they were quite so corrupt and incompetent as they are now.
I was a lineboy for the police helicopter squad. Bear in mind that these were the "elites" who had to pass a special exam and get promoted to work on this squad. Other than one guy who was a gun collector and hobby shooter, as a skinny 16 year old girl with my mom's .32 S&W revolver I could outshoot them all.
Problem is, most police officers think of the sidearm as just another tool, like the radio or the nightstick. They don't practice except to qualify once a year, and the qualifying test is so easy that I could probably pass it shooting left handed. Hobby shooters, in contrast, put an awful lot of lead up the spout. By the time I was 16 I had probably fired a pistol more often than most of the officers did in their entire careers.
Kinda sad, really.
Just like the FBI agent getting killed here in NJ.
Mrs VS
If you read the article, the fire was started by a teargas cannister landing on a bed. Now if there had been hostages there...
These cops are killing their own and burning houses down.
New Yorkers better pray they never need to be rescued by the troopers.
Mrs VS
The Times is fairly quiet on this one because New York State requires a permit for all handgun ownership (has for many years now) and they are completely banned in NYC.
Interesting that Hillbillerys territory (New York) has had 2 rampaging cop killers and their almost exclusive targets were state police in the last couple years.
I understand that fires started by teargas canisters happen.
I do personally know a few troopers and have a great deal of respect for them. They are not hot shots, they all tend to be rather sober individuals. They’re certainly light years ahead of some of the officers on the local police forces I know.
My opinion, accidents happen. Getting shot either by the perp or friendly fire is a job hazard.
My heart goes out to those troopers who think that their bullet may have been the one to hit his fellow trooper.
So they've been taking lessons ftom BATF?
Now that I'm in Idaho, I have access to an outdoor range that is open 365 days during daylight hours. The downside is the weather is rarely cooperation (rain, snow, wind) and I have much less time. The intersection of free time and good weather really limits shooting time.
The upside of the outdoor range is 15/25/50/100/375/1000 yd ranges. A nice club house. Club owned silhouettes and nice steel rails on the range to support the critters. There's a shotgun range too. The annual cost is $40 for both of us.
My wife works for the local PD as a dispatcher. The SWAT officers are out at their special range 3 days a week. They put a lot of lead downrange each week. Not like big city slackers. Most of them are damn good hunters too. They bring back elk and deer every season.
We used to be members at the local gun club -- nice facility with five trap-and-skeet fields, a 100/200/500 rifle range, a target pistol setup, 2 metallic silhouette ranges (full and half distance) and a plinking range for folks who just wanted to put holes in cans (no glass).
Then the local Dunwoody Debs started worrying about the lead somehow migrating from the berms over to the subdivisions they lived in (which of course were built long after the range was in operation) and basically drove them out of business.
They bought a bunch of land WAY out of town, but they moved beyond our feasible distance to stay members (we work downtown and have to live within reasonable distance of work and the kids' schools). We shoot pistol and .22 rifle in town and skeet and sporting clays on a friend's farm, and high-power rifle on ANOTHER friend's farm.
Needless to say, as soon as the kids finish school we are moving further out, and proximity to a good gun club will be one of the factors in our decision!
ping
A study showed that NYC cops were 11 times more likely than an armed victim to shoot the wrong person. :-(
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