Larry Davis – the notorious thug who wounded six Bronx cops during a 1986 shootout and then went on the lam for 17 days – was stabbed to death in an upstate prison, officials said yesterday.
Davis, 41, serving 25 years to life for an unrelated slaying, was stabbed by another inmate Wednesday night in a recreation yard at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility, 80 miles north of the city.
The other inmate, Luis Rosada, 42, serving 25 years to life for murder and assault, repeatedly stabbed Davis in the head, chest, arms, back and legs with a 91/2-by-11/4-inch shank, a prison-made knife, officials said.
Both men had been repeatedly disciplined for fighting with other inmates and staff – though not with each other, officials said.
“You reap what you sow,” said lawyer Bill Flack, a former Bronx assistant district attorney who prosecuted Davis. “He led a violent life. He died a violent death.”
Donald O’Sullivan, 64, one of the wounded cops, said Davis “was not going to die in peace. They made him out to be a choir boy, but he would kill a priest.”
Davis gained notoriety – but became a folk hero to some – after he grabbed a pistol and a shotgun and opened fire on nine cops who came to bust him at his sister’s apartment for allegedly rubbing out five drug dealers.
Davis managed to escape through a window after wounding six cops.
After a 17-day nationwide manhunt, he surrendered to authorities.
At his trial, Davis was defended by the late civil-rights lawyer William Kunstler, and his co-counsel, Lynne Stewart, who referred to him as a “black Rambo.”
Stewart, now 69, was convicted in 2006 of aiding blind terror Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and his radical followers, and sentenced to 28 months in prison. She is free pending appeal.
Davis claimed he had fired at the cops in self-defense because he believed they had come to kill him – and the jury bought it.
He was acquitted of attempted murder, but convicted on weapons charges and sentenced to five to 15 years behind bars.
In 1991, Davis was convicted in the 1986 slaying of a suspected drug dealer.
Mary Buckley, 61, another of the cops shot during the 1986 shootout, said the world is “a safer place” now that Davis is dead.
Buckley, now a psychiatric nurse, said she will never forget the day Davis shot her.
“The next thing I heard were the bullets,” she recalled yesterday. “It was like slow motion into my mouth. I thought it went straight into my spinal cord.”
“I could hear my heart beating really loudly,” she said. “I thought I was going to die, but my heart kept beating.”