GOING HOME: Shot-in-the-back Officer Michael Levay leaves Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn yesterday, a day after saving his partner’s life. (Paul Martinka)
MAYHEM: Juan Pichardo (left) was shot with this gun (far right) in The Bronx and Lukasz Kozicki (right) got hit in Brooklyn.
The gun used to shoot a Bronx cop was stolen from an elderly North Carolina woman in 2008 — and she was stunned to learn that her weapon had been used in the attack.
Diane Wells, 71, reported the Bryco .38-caliber pistol stolen after it was snatched out of her vehicle at a car wash.
Thursday night, a thug used that weapon to shoot an off-duty cop fending off would-be robbers at a used-car dealership where he also worked, police said.
“Are you kidding me?” said Wells, whose husband bought the weapon for $139 at a 2006 gun fair.
“The guys took the car and they cleaned it inside and out,” Wells told The Post.
“I stuck it in between the seats and when I went to get the car it was gone. I always . . . wondered who took it.”
Wells said she always kept a loaded pistol in her car after she and her late husband, John Powell, were mugged at gunpoint in 2003 in a parking lot.
In the Bronx shooting, Officer Juan Pichardo, 34, after being shot, still bravely subdued a gunman after the suspect and cohorts allegedly tried to rob the dealership.
Cops charged Jeffrey Okine, 22, of Mount Vernon; Marquis Daniels, 23, of The Bronx; Tyquez Harrell, 22, of Brooklyn; and Rayshaun Jones, 25, of The Bronx, with attempted murder, assault and robbery.
Jason Marengo, 29, a yard manager at Boston Road Auto Mall, said he had shown the alleged robbers a carblack 2001 Nissan Maxima.
“Once we got into the office, he tells me, ‘This is not a joke. This is a stickup.’ He told me to get on the floor,” Marengo said.
The robbers tied up their victims with zip ties, he said.
Harrell allegedly pistol-whipped Pichardo and barked, “Where’s the safe?” a law-enforcement source said.
He allegedly handed the gun to Okine and searched for cash, sources said. That’s when Pichardo made his move and busted out of the zip tie.
During a struggle with Okine, Pichardo was shot in the right leg, sources said.
Okine was held by Marengo, a customer and a wounded Pichardo, the sources added.
Harrell, Daniels and Jones were busted nearby in a getaway car, cops said.
About an hour later in Brooklyn, cops were shot on a Manhattan-bound N train — allegedly by Peter Jourdan, 37 — when they confronted him for illegally walking between subway cars, police said.
Officer Michael Levay, 27, was hit in the back of his bulletproof vest but still managed to fatally shoot Jourdan — saving partner Lukasz Kozicki, whom Jourdan had shot in the leg and groin.
“[Kozicki] couldn’t move. He was a sitting duck,” a law- enforcement source said. “If Levay didn’t return fire and shoot Jourdan, the guy would have killed Kozicki.”
Kozicki, whose family left Poland in the 1980s, shrugged off his injuries just a half-hour after his attack, his father said.
“He said he got shot and he’s OK,” said Stan Kozicki.
A bullet also grazed straphanger Manny Ramos, 28, in the thigh, sources said.
“He jumped under the seats. He felt it, he was hit,” said Laura Vazquez, 27, Ramos’ mother’s home health aide.
“He normally gets off at New Utrecht but the one day he gets off at Fort Hamilton, look what happened.”
Jourdan had seven prior arrests in Los Angeles, including bringing a gun to court, sources said. He had a sealed record in New York.
His last known address was a Chelsea flophouse. He previously lived off and on in an Allentown, Pa., hotel.
“He was kind of creepy honestly, just his mannerisms,” said manager Scott Banks of the West End Hotel in Allentown.
Both Levay and Kozicki were released yesterday from Lutheran Medical Center.
* Originally purchased for $139 at a gun show in Fayetteville, NC, in 2006
* Reported stolen by Diane Wells after she took her car to be washed on Aug. 13, 2008
* Referred to in some gun circles as a prototypical “Saturday Night Special” for its small size, cheap cost and average quality
Additional reporting by Erin Calabrese, Kate Kowsh and Lia Eustachewich