The NYPD detective who shot and killed a thug in a Harlem subway station yesterday, despite being shot in the arm, said today that he simply reacted.
“It was just instinct more than anything,” Queens Detective Kevin Herlihy told The Post.
Herlihy said “it’s very fortunate, [I’m] very lucky” to have survived the shootout.
“I’m relieved. … I count my blessings. Thank God,” he said.
His wife Adrienne told The Post, “First I was worried. It is amazing what he did. We will be happy to have him back. You know considering what happened he has done very well.”
The couple’s three children “are handling this very well,” she added.
Herlihy was wheeled out of the hospital around 11:15 a.m. while about 70 to 80 cops cheered him on.
“I just want to go home and see my wife and wish her a Happy Valentine’s Day,” he later told reporters as he got into a silver Chrysler minivan.
When he arrived home on Long Island, Herlihy hugged his wife and said he was ready to spend time with his family.
Herlihy and career criminal Michael McBride exchanged 19 shots during the 4:20 p.m. violence — sending terrified straphangers running for cover in the crowded station at St. Nicholas Avenue and West 145th Street.
McBride, 52 — who was wanted for shooting his ex-girlfriend’s daughter in the head Monday — died at the scene with a bullet to the chest.
The mayhem erupted as Herlihy and his team from the Queens Violent Felony Squad used McBride’s cellphone to track him to the neighborhood where he used to live.
They followed the phone’s pings all over lower Manhattan to The Bronx to Harlem before spotting him in an upper Manhattan Starbucks buying coffee, sources said.
It was apparently clear that he knew he was wanted. He was carrying his .22-caliber pistol wrapped in a newspaper at the time, sources said.
“There he is!’’ one of the detectives said upon spotting him.
As the officers started to move in, McBride began running into the subway.
McBride got into the station and was cutting across in front of the clerk’s booth to race up another set of stairs to the street, with Herlihy in pursuit, amid bustling rush-hour foot traffic, sources said.
Just as he was about to climb up, the perp whipped around and immediately began blasting — firing six shots, officials said.
One of the bullets struck Herlihy, who lives in Lynbrook, LI, in the left bicep, authorities said.
The injured Herlihy, who is right-handed, managed to fire back using his uninjured arm, squeezing off 13 shots, the sources said. None of the other cops, who were trailing Herlihy, fired
After McBride was struck, he managed to stumble up one flight before collapsing on a landing.
“Sometimes these police shootings happen in bunches, and we’ve had two in about a month now,” said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association. “And I certainly hope it doesn’t become open season on police officers … policing this city is difficult, dangerous, and at times it is a deadly job and this incident is yet another reminder of that.”
Detective Kevin Herlihy leaves the hospital today. (Gregory P. Mango)