Top cop James O’Neill on Friday defended the pair of officers captured on video not providing aid to fatal gang-stabbing victim Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz as the teen bled to death on a sidewalk in the Bronx last week.
“They stop — a big crowd, big chaotic scene,” the NYPD commissioner said at an unrelated press conference at police headquarters in reference to the two cops seen in the gruesome cellphone video.
“They pull the car up to block the driveway so Junior can be tended to. Cops are out…there is somebody applying direct pressure to Junior’s wounds at the time,” O’Neill said.
O’Neill confirmed that the Bronx borough command is reviewing the officers’ response to the situation, but added, “I don’t see anything wrong with it.”
“It was a chaotic scene,” the police commissioner said. “I’m sure they tried their best.”
O’Neill commented on how in the video a woman can be seen applying pressure to the mortally wounded boy’s neck in his final moments.
“Listen, we get paid to help people,” he said. “We get first aid [training] in the academy. There is a duty to help people, but if somebody’s applying direct pressure on a wound already — I don’t want to get too graphic here — but you don’t want to remove that pressure.”
O’Neill doubled down on the cops’ response to the tragedy, saying “they did their best.”
“They’re here to help…Again, I can’t repeat myself enough…the whole thing is absolutely, I’ve never seen anything like it before, so I’m not looking to turn two cops into scapegoats here,” O’Neill said as he called the bloody scene “very difficult, very tragic.”
He continued: “Our focus has to be on the people that committed this murder, not on the two cops that stopped and tried to help Lesandro.”
Guzman-Feliz was fatally stabbed to death, allegedly by a vicious pack of suspected members with the Dominican gang known as Trinitarios outside of the Cruz and Chiky bodega in the Bronx on June 20.
Eight people have been arrested and charged with the death of the teen, who was in the NYPD Explorers program.
O’Neill called the young man’s death “just an absolute tragedy all the way around.”
