The “hero” NYPD detective who was shot in the gut Monday during a gunfight with a fugitive child molester in the West Village was wheeled out of the hospital Wednesday afternoon to a huge crowd of cheering cops.
“I feel great,” said Mario Muniz, 45, who was pushed in a wheelchair out of Bellevue Hospital around 12:30 p.m. by his partner, Detective Joseph Trovato. As he was loaded into a car, Muniz shouted out, “Thank you to the hospital, the NYPD and my family,” as he proudly donned his police jacket.
“What a difference a few days makes,” said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association. “This time Monday afternoon, we were in a wild shootout with a very dangerous individual and here we are, [two] days later, and we’re able to walk out of the hospital under our own power.”
Muniz was shot during a fierce firefight Monday at a West Fourth Street bong shop following a tip that Charles Mozdir, an accused pervert on the run from California, was working there. The barrage of bullets exchanged during the shootout left Muniz and two US marshals injured and Mozdir dead.
Muniz was wearing a bulletproof vest Monday that unquestionably saved his life, Dr. Spiros Frangos said Wednesday prior to Muniz’s release. He was quickly brought in for surgery following the incident after one of three bullets that hit him went through the right side of his abdomen.
“He was very fortunate the bullet traveled in front of all his vital organs,” said Frangos, chief of emergency surgery at Bellevue Hospital, who said the bullet missed Muniz’s vital organs by centimeters. “He was very lucky.” The bullet is still inside his body, but does not pose any health risks.
Palladino said it’s “nothing short of a miracle” that Muniz survived the point-blank shots fired at him.
Later in the day, an NYPD spokesman said cops were in the process of returning Mozdir’s pet dog, a stolen male black Labrador retriever named “Lucky,” to its rightful owner.
Sources said Mozdir, 32, snatched the pooch from his girlfriend in Florida, who ratted him out after seeing him Sunday on the TV show “The Hunt.”
Lucky, who’s being cared for by NYPD Bomb Squad members, wagged his tail when cops let news photographers snap his picture outside the Sixth Precinct.
Mozdir, on the run since 2012 from child-molestation charges in California, was working at the Smoking Culture NYC store on West Fourth Street when the New York-New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force tracked him down.
The tattooed creep — who grew a “ZZ Top”-style beard to disguise himself — opened fire with a .32-caliber revolver when task-force members rushed inside.
Two deputy US marshals, Pat Lin and Ryan Westfield, suffered minor injuries in the gun battle that followed.
Dr. Spiros Frangos, Bellevue’s chief of emergency surgery, said Muniz’s bulletproof vest saved his life by blocking two bullets.
Frangos also said Muniz was “very lucky” that a third round, which entered his right side above the navel and traveled to the left, missed his vital organs by mere centimeters.
Additional reporting by Frank Rosario and Sophia Rosenbaum