A hero cop was shot twice from just feet away — but still managed to fire back at the ex-con gunman and save his NYPD partners’ lives by shielding them during a blazing gun battle in a Brooklyn apartment was released today from the hospital.
Det. Kenneth Ayala, 49, took bullets to his thigh and ankle — and couldn’t even walk out on his own — but fought to hang on to the group’s “bunker,’’ or shield, to protect the five officers with him.
“It’s good to go home,” said Ayala, as he left out of Lutheran Hospital.
Asked he felt, Ayala replied, “Good.”
Despite his bravery, Ayala refused to be branded a hero.
“We are all work together,” he said.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for [Ayala],” Detective Michael Keenan, 52, told a parade of well-wishers at Lutheran Hospital Sunday after being struck in his left calf during the 12:30 a.m. firefight, in which four of the cops were wounded, one source said.
Keenan and Ayala were sharing a room yesterday, and Keenan would tell every visitor how Ayala “was a hero,” sources said.
But Ayala humbly waved off the praise and repeatedly insisted, “I’m not a hero.”
Another source said of Ayala, “He definitely saved their lives.
“It was a superhuman effort. He was shot twice, he held on to the bunker . . . and then he was able to empty one gun and fired a second gun.”
Keenan was wounded and laying on the ground, unable to move, so if Ayala hadn’t been able to maintain the bunker, Keenan likely would have been hit again.
The bunker is a hand-held Kevlar body shield that weighs about 15 pounds.
The cops — members of the elite Emergency Service Unit — fought the life-or-death battle after Nakwon Foxworth, 33, barricaded himself in his Sheepshead Bay apartment with his pregnant girlfriend and their 4-month-old son, said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
The woman escaped with the baby, and as the six-member police team came through the door, Foxworth — armed to the teeth — unloaded on them, cops said.
He squeezed off 12 shots, purposely aiming below the 3-foot-long bunker to hit them, sources said. Three of the cops fired back a total of 29 times, officials said.
Cops said Foxworth also had other loaded guns he didn’t use,. including shotgun bullets that would have easily pierced the Kevlar shield, and would have done more damage than the bullets fired from the handgun he used.
In addition to Ayala and Keenan, Officer Matthew Granahan, 35, was hit in the left calf, and Capt. Al Pizzano, 45, suffered a graze wound to the face, injuring his nose and cheek.
Cops said Foxworth was shot once in the abdomen and was in critical but stable condition.
“The gunfight occurred in close quarters with the assailant and the officers no more than 10 feet apart,” Kelly said. “It was a good thing Foxworth was stopped.”
The bloody drama began after Foxworth returned home with his girlfriend, Jessica Hickling, and their baby and found the service ramp to the apartment building blocked by two men delivering furniture.
The baby was in a stroller, and according to one of the movers, Foxworth was incensed that the couple’s path was obstructed by a barrel the movers were using to hold the door open.