A New Jersey teenager is clinging to life after being shot in the head by NYPD cops when he allegedly tried to flee a traffic stop in the Bronx Sunday night, police and sources said. 

Officers in two separate unmarked police cars tried to pull over the driver of the black Jeep on Boston Road and East 165th Street after he blew several red lights at about 8 p.m., Chief of Department Kenneth Corey said at a Sunday night press briefing.

The first cop car, with its warning lights on, pulled ahead of the Jeep while the second police vehicle came up behind the SUV, Corey said.

“As the officers exited their vehicle, the Jeep backed up and sped directly towards one officer who discharged his weapon at the vehicle striking the driver,” said Corey.

“The officers immediately began to render life-saving aid to the driver.”

“The department’s policy is not to shoot at a moving vehicle unless something other than the vehicle is being used as a weapon,” Corey added. “However, there is a carve-out in there that gets reviewed on a case-by-case basis by the first deputy commissioner’s use of force review board.” 

He did not elaborate on the comment. 

Police said the driver, identified by relatives as Luis Manuel-Monsanto, who lives in Clifton, NJ and does not have a criminal record, was taken to Lincoln Hospital in critical condition. Two officers were hospitalized for observation. 

“The bullet went in through the front [of his head],” his aunt, Daniela Monsanto, said Monday. “They took fragments out. Some were too deep in the brain where they couldn’t work on those, but the doctor’s happy with what he was able to take out. He was able to stop the hemorrhaging.”

Monsanto said her nephew grew up in the Bronx and is a sophomore at Cardinal Hayes High School despite the family’s recent move to New Jersey.

She said Manuel-Monsanto’s father has been in a wheelchair since breaking his back at his hotel job about seven years ago. 

She blasted cops for shooting and wounding her nephew, whom she described as “a great kid” and a “sweet boy.”

“They took this literally way out of what it was supposed to be,” said Monsanto, 36. “They weren’t even supposed to shoot, even if supposedly there was a moving vehicle.

“You could have said, ‘This is the police. Stay in your car or we’re coming out.’ They came out with their gun in their hands. What do you think the split decision was that my nephew made? ‘These are people that are probably going to rob me.'”

Manuel-Monsanto has not been charged in the incident. 

“We’re just praying and hoping to God that everything goes well,” the wounded driver’s uncle told The Post outside the hospital on Monday. 

Cops did not recover any weapons or drugs from the vehicle, sources said. 

Three other occupants of the Jeep were taken into custody, sources said. The owner of the car was a passenger, according to the sources.

Two of the passengers, including the Jeep’s 18-year-old owner, were later released by police. The third passenger, a 27-year-old man who was in the back seat, was held on an outstanding 2016 warrant, sources said. 

Corey said the shooting was captured on a police body camera and the videos are being reviewed. 

One police source said the bodycam footage shows the Jeep “heading right for” one of the cops at the scene.