The shooting of an innocent, unarmed elderly Bronx man by a cop who was trying to turn on a pistol-mounted flashlight is at least the second accidental police shooting in the US involving that same flashlight model.
But unlike Saturday’s shooting of 76-year-old Jose Colon — who survived a cop’s bullet to the stomach — an unarmed Texas man died Oct. 13 under what reportedly were strikingly similar circumstances involving the Surefire X300 flashlight.
The family of that dead man, suspected drug dealer Michael Anthony Alcala, is now suing the city of Plano for negligence in the shooting, where a cop claimed he inadvertently fired instead of turning on the flashlight as intended.
A New York firearms expert yesterday criticized the use of pistol-mounted flashlights, saying they complicate what is already a stressful situation for cops pointing guns.
“A handgun should be a handgun, and a flashlight should be a flashlight,” said firearms instructor Kenneth Cooper, who was an expert witness for one of the NYPD officers acquitted for the 1999 shooting of unarmed Bronx man Amadou Diallou.
“When you put a flashlight on a weapon system, there are numerous things that you have to manipulate, and under stress, things are more difficult,” Cooper said. “I don’t like flashlights on guns, I never did. I personally don’t see the necessity . . . a flashlight to me is an unnecessary hazard.”
Derek McDonald, Surefire’s vice president of marketing, said the Plano shooting was the first time time the company had heard a claim that one of its flashlights played a role in a cop firing his gun accidentally until The Post notified him of the Colon case. McDonald also noted that Surefire has sold such products since the late 1980s.
“Our product is safe, has been proven safe,” McDonald said. “Used in a safe manner, it doesn’t lead to accidents. It prevents misidentification and saves police lives.”
Colon was shot during a drug raid early Saturday in his Soundview apartment when Emergency Services Officer Andrew McCormack tried to turn on the Surefire X300 flashlight mounted underneath the barrel of his Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistol, and instead pulled the gun’s trigger, sources said.
The light is turned on by pushing one of two switches in front of the trigger guard.
Colon was unarmed and not charged with a crime. But cops busted his 41-year-old son, Alberto, for heroin possession.
The elderly Colon, who once worked for state Sen. Ruben Diaz as a supervisor in a home-attendant program, was recovering yesterday in Jacobi Hospital, where he had been visited Saturday by both Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. Kelly had no immediate comment when asked whether the NYPD will continue using the weapon.
In the Texas case, an undercover narcotics police sergeant drew his pistol on drug suspect Alcala in a dark parking lot on Oct. 13, and tried to turn on his Surefire X300 flashlight on, according to a story in the Dallas Morning News.
But instead of turning on the light, the cop accidentally fired the gun, killing Alcala.
Plano police have said they don’t believe the flashlight was a problem