A New Jersey Transit cop who shot himself in the left finger with a staple gun got a $2 million disability pension from the Garden State — even though he still fires a rifle for fun and posts Facebook videos of himself at shooting ranges.
‘’It absolutely looks ridiculous,’’ Chris Onesti, 34, who retired on disability five years ago at 29, told News 4 New York, about his trips to the shooting ranges. “On the face of it, it looks absolutely absurd.’’
The injury to the ring finger on his non-shooting hand also doesn’t impair Onesti, who now lives in Pennsylvania, from signing and cashing nearly $46,000 a year in tax-free checks from New Jersey. The ‘’accidental disability’’ payouts, if he lives to be 80, would be worth about $2 million overall.
Onesti’s sweet pension deal and his trips to the gun range were revealed by WNBC, working with the website New Jersey Watchdog.
In a video obtained by the watchdog group, Onesti is seen flashing an SSG 69 Austrian Army sniper rifle. Using his right hand, he shoots off five rounds, then grins at the camera.
‘’Austrians really know how to make awesome firearms,’’ Onesti boasted in a Facebook post.
Onesti was 27 and working for NJ Transit when, during a 2006 firearms qualifying test, he knocked down his paper target and tried to reattached it with a staple gun. He hit his finger instead, and had ‘’a wound the size of a pinprick.’’ After bandaging the wound, Onesti finished his tests.
The next day, he said, he woke up with a badly swollen finger and was ordered to have two surgeries.
Authorities later ruled Onesti was ‘’totally and permanently disabled,’’ unable to properly operate a gun with his weakened left hand, or handcuff or take control of suspects, according to New Jersey Watchdog.
Onesti said NJ Transit refused his request for another job with the agency, and had no choice but to retire.
“My career was taken away from me without any choice on my part,” Onesti, who now works for a loss-management firm, told the Newark Star Ledger. “I was an unwilling participant in all this drama.”