Quick-acting cops saved an armed, suicidal 19-year-old man who tried to dive out of a 10th-floor window on the Upper West Side — in a dramatic encounter captured on body-worn cameras.
The teen’s mother called 911 on Feb. 18 just after 9 p.m. scared her son might hurt himself, but when cops arrived at the apartment on W. 68th Street, no one answered the door.
“I knocked on the door. We could hear the distress inside, but we couldn’t get an answer,” Officer Nelson Gomez told reporters Wednesday.
Luckily, one of the cops checked the door and realized it was unlocked, according to Gomez.
Gomez and three other officers — Eugene Choi, Ibrahim Morrsi and William Bodner — rushed into the apartment, where they encountered a chaotic domestic dispute in one of the bedrooms, with the mother screaming and her son, who was armed with a knife and acting erratically.
Then “he dives headfirst out the window,” Gomez recounted.
Police Officers Morsi, Bodner, Gomez Jr and ChoiNYPD / Twitter“Officer Choi quickly reacts, grabs the gentleman from his left ankle as he hangs out the window,” Gomez recalled.
As Choi is holding the teen by his ankle, the other two cops, Bodner and Morrsi rush over to keep the 19-year-old from falling, according to cops and video.
Gomez runs over last, as the officers order the 19-year-old to drop the knife and finally pull him to safety, according to the footage.
“The gentleman is safe, that is the most important thing,” Gomez said. “It took seconds. Our adrenaline was pumping. Honestly, it was just a relief to save another person’s life.”
The 19-year-old, whose name was not released because he was not charged, was taken to the hospital where he was given a psychological evaluation, according to the NYPD.
