Metro

NYPD sergeant told investigators she wanted to end tryst with suicide cop

UNDERCOVERS BOSS: NYPD Sgt. Christine Hirtzel, outside her home yesterday, told investigators she wanted to end the affair with an underling.

UNDERCOVERS BOSS: NYPD Sgt. Christine Hirtzel, outside her home yesterday, told investigators she wanted to end the affair with an underling. (newsdick.net)

UNDERCOVERS BOSS: NYPD Sgt. Christine Hirtzel, outside her home yesterday, told investigators she wanted to end the affair with an underling. (
)

The police sergeant sued for allegedly driving her subordinate to suicide when she refused to break off their affair told investigators that the relationship was consensual — and that her NYPD lover killed himself when she tried to dump him, law-enforcement sources say.

Sgt. Christine Hirtzel was accused in a Queens lawsuit filed by the widow of her former paramour of threatening to make Officer Matthew Schindler’s work life unbearable unless he continued the tryst.

But a source said the NYPD sergeant told Internal Affairs investigators that Schindler was the one who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“He was really into her . . . She told IAB at the time that they were having a consensual affair and she tried to break it off,” the source said. “[She said] he became upset, and he said that he couldn’t live without her, then killed himself.”

Schindler shot himself with his service weapon on the side of the Long Island Expressway last Feb. 13. At the time, it was the fourth NYPD suicide in a month.

Moments earlier, Schindler “called [Hirtzel], saying he wouldn’t be around anymore,” the source said.

The lawsuit, filed last week, alleges that Schindler killed himself after Hirtzel refused to stop pursuing him sexually.

A panicked Hirtzel — who allegedly confessed to the affair and told her captain Schindler threatened suicide — asked cops in her 115th Precinct station house to track Schindler’s location using his cellphone, sources said.

“She actually said, ‘Can you guys go up on his phone?’ You can’t just do that,” the source told The Post.

Gina Schindler, who’s suing Hirtzel, the city and the NYPD, seemed to know her husband was having an affair, the source said.

“At the funeral, the widow was going around asking, ‘Who was [her husband’s] boss?’ ” the source said.

Officer Schindler “was made to understand that he would suffer tangible detriment in his job . . . if he did not submit to the sexual advances and demands of [Hirtzel],” the suit claims.

Hirtzel yesterday ignored questions outside her Hicksville, LI home.

Gina Schindler declined to comment. Her lawyer did not respond to a phone message.

Additional reporting by Lorena Mongelli and Frank Rosario