NYPD cops kept a tight grip Tuesday on a drug suspect whom they captured a day after he wriggled out of his handcuffs and escaped in a police cruiser, sources said.
Bryan McMenamin was busted for selling dope at about 7 p.m. Monday and was left in the back of the car with a second suspect when cops went to investigate an unrelated crime, police said.
The suspect was able to wriggle from his shackles, squirm into the driver’s seat and speed off.
He injured a Queens narcotics detective during the getaway, and parked the stolen police car about a mile away, cops added.
The second suspect was still inside when cops found their vehicle — and he swore he had “nothing to do with taking the car,” sources said.
McMenamin, meanwhile, had jumped in a cab for Manhattan and was found Tuesday afternoon hiding out with a woman on St. James Place on the Lower East Side, sources said.
The woman called a lawyer, who notified police, sources added.
McMenamin, from upstate Ulster County, said nothing as he was walked by two burly 104th Precinct detectives from the 104th Precinct in purple gym shorts and a white T-shirt.
He was cuffed behind his back and shackled at the ankles.
McMenamin has a prior arrest from 2012 for shooting a woman’s vehicle during a carjacking in Glendale, Queens, police sources said.
In 2011, he was charged with arson for allegedly setting a car on fire, the sources said, and also has robbery and menacing arrests dating back to 2001.