The off-duty cop whose head was repeatedly battered by a hulking thug is “doing well” and has recovered enough to start speaking to the relatives who’ve been keeping a bedside vigil at Jamaica Hospital, a cousin said Tuesday.
Sgt. Mohamed Deen, 40, is also being prepped for transfer to Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital for further treatment, Madal Singh said.
“He’s doing much better. He’s talking,” Singh said.
“His family is here. His mother, brother, wife. Everyone is here for him.”
Singh said he hadn’t yet visited Deen, but watched the horrific online video of him getting brutally bashed outside a Queens diner early Sunday morning.
“It’s disgusting. It’s very upsetting. I can’t explain it. It’s sad. It’s shocking,” he said.
Earlier Tuesday, the NYPD said Deen — who was put into a medically induced coma to help heal his injured brain — was breathing on his own after being removed from a mechanical ventilator.
Deen also showed signs of improvement when Police Surgeon Dr. Eli Kleinman visited him Monday morning, spokesman John McCarthy said.
Queens mechanic Hayden Holder, 29, is charged with attempted murder and assault in the attack on Deen, which cops said followed an earlier confrontation between the two men at a Queens night club.
The cell-phone video shows Deen getting sucker-punched, then repeatedly clobbered in the head as he lay sprawled on the street.
The video also shows the attacker trying in vain to smash the windows of Deen’s white BMW 535i — with Deen’s wife, Ashley Raghoo-Deen, inside — then returning to Deen, smashing his head on the pavement and whaling away some more.
Mount Sinai has a renowned neurosurgery department and conducts cutting-edge research into the treatment of traumatic brain injuries.
Last year, Dr. Joshua Bederson performed life-saving surgery there on cop Eder Loor after a deranged ex-con plunged a knife into Loor’s head in East Harlem.