Eder Loor
Terrance Hale
THE WEAPON: After visiting wounded Eder Loor (above right) yesterday, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly displays the knife used in the attack. Below right: HALE (
)
A crazed brute whose mom was trying to have him committed plunged a knife into the head of a Harlem cop yesterday — but the officer miraculously survived the assault, authorities said.
It took surgeons several hours to stop the bleeding in Officer Eder Loor’s brain — where the blade had penetrated at least 1 1/2 inches. The 28-year-old cop was in the intensive-care unit, lucky to be alive.
“He’s very, very lucky. I just hope we don’t run out of luck,’’ said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who visited Loor at Mount Sinai Hospital, where the wounded cop was alert.
But “he’s in a lot of pain,’’ Kelly said.
Mayor Bloomberg said doctors were “cautiously optimistic” that the officer would recover.
Loor has a young daughter, and he and wife Nina are expecting a second child in July.
Last night, his wife, mother and other relatives were keeping vigil at his hospital bedside.
“He’s much better, he’s speaking a bit,” said his step-mother, Ana Canals.
“I took his hand and he squeezed it. I said, ‘I love you baby.’ ”
The injured officer has been on the job for six years and is a sergeant in the Air National Guard.
The assault occurred after Loor and his partner, Luckson Merisme, responded to a 911 call at around 10:45 a.m. from a distraught mother reporting that her son was acting irrationally.
The woman met the officers outside her apartment building on Third Avenue and gave a description of her son, Terrence Hale, 26.
The cops soon saw him come out of the elevator.
The officers followed Hale to the street corner, where he barked, “Take your hands off me! Don’t touch me!” witnesses said.
Suddenly, Hale pulled a 3 1/2-inch blade and plunged it into Loor’s forehead above his left eye, police said.
“There was blood pouring from his face,” said witness Kodjo Tossavi, 26.
The suspect ran toward East 109th Street “with six cops following him,” said Tossavi.
Hale then entered JFK Fried Chicken & Pizza and waited as the cops came for him.
He was “waving his arms around like he was saying, ‘Come at me!’ He definitely looked crazy to me,” said Miguel Garcia, who works at a hardware store on the block.
Meanwhile, the badly wounded Loor was still able to press a towel against his wound.
Hale was apprehended and brought to Metropolitan Hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
He was charged with attempted aggravated murder, assault and weapons possession.
He has served time before for wielding a knife — convicted in a 2006 Harlem stabbing and spending about a year in jail. He was also busted for robbery in 2002.
Kelly said the stabbing was “another reminder that, in a split second, a police officer’s life can be placed in great jeopardy.”
Additional reporting by Larry Celona, Gillian Kleiman and Doug Auer