An NYPD cop is lucky to be alive after he was shot in the base of the skull last night while chasing a murder suspect through a Brooklyn housing project, authorities said.
“This was a miracle,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said at Bellevue Hospital, where Officer Kevin Brennan had been rushed. “He’s one lucky young man.”
This morning, Kelly, addressing SHIELD members at One Police Plaza, said he visited Brennan earlier today. “He is in and out of consciousness, mostly because of the morphine he’s been given,” Kelly said. “It really is a miracle.”
Mayor Bloomberg said he spoke to Brennan about the cop’s 6-week-old daughter, Maeve.
“He understood he was hit and he said he was in a lot of pain, but we joked about his daughter,” Bloomberg said.
The harrowing incident unfolded when Brennan responded, along with two other plainclothes cops, to a report of shots fired at the Bushwick Houses at about 9 p.m.
When they pulled up, they saw three men running out of a building on Moore Street and began chasing them, Kelly said.
Luis “Baby” Ortiz, 21, who previously had been arrested by one of the responding officers, ran into the lobby of 370 Bushwick Ave., and Brennan, 29, followed.
The other cops, Officers Michael Burbridge and Christopher Mastoros, tried to follow, but the front door locked.
Ortiz spun and fired a shot at Brennan, who was able to squeeze off a round, cops said.
The other officers rushed toward their wounded comrade.
“I saw the cop on the floor. He was bleeding from the head,” said one resident who asked not to be identified. “There was a lot of blood.”
Another witness, Jasmine Minerva-Ortiz, 24, said, “There were about 30 cops and they just rushed the stretcher into the ambulance.
Brennan was rushed to the hospital, where surgeons removed the entire slug from his skull, behind his right ear.
Brennan, who lives on Long Island with his wife, Janet, and daughter, is expected to make a full recovery.
“There’s no reason to think her daddy won’t see her crawl for the first time or dance at her wedding,” Bloomberg said.
Kelly added that Brennan was in and out of consciousness and was on morphine for pain.
Brennan’s supervisor, Lt. Christopher Devaney, rushed to the hospital last night.
“I was sick [yesterday], otherwise I would’ve been with him. It kills me,” Devaney said.
“He’s a great guy. He’s one of the best.”
A couple of hours after the shooting, cops nabbed Ortiz at his uncle’s apartment on Bushwick Avenue, cops said.
When the horde of cops knocked on the door of the fifth-floor apartment, the man said his nephew was in the back. They found Ortiz, who was wanted for questioning in the slaying of Andrew Brown, 45, in Bed-Stuy — the city’s first homicide this year, cops said.
Charges were pending early today. Cops were still searching for the other two men, who fled.
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton and Jamie Schram
‘THIS WAS A MIRACLE’: Police Commissioner Ray Kelly last night displays the bullet taken from the cop’s skull as suspect Luis ”Baby” Ortiz is taken into custody. (NY Post: William C. Lopez)
Luis ”Baby” Ortiz (Paul Martinka)
This revolver was found on the ground near the scene, and is believed to be the weapon used to shoot Brennan. (NYPD)