Shot By Cop

Long Island cop ‘inconsolable’ over friendly-fire death of Hofstra student during hostage standoff - NYPOST.com
The Nassau County cop who fatally shot a Hofstra University student during a terrifying home-invasion standoff is “inconsolable,” sources told The Post yesterday.

“He blames himself and keeps replaying it in his mind,” a police source said. “He is torn up about the poor girl.”

The veteran officer was identified by sources as Officer Nikolas Budimlic, 42, a former NYPD cop with two young kids of his own, including a daughter.

Budimlic accidently shot and killed 21-year-old Andrea Rebello on Friday as violent felon Dalton Smith held her in a headlock and used her as a human shield while he trained a 9mm pistol at the officer.

Budimlic fired eight shots at Smith. Seven bullets hit the perp; one struck Rebello in the head, authorities said.

Rebello’s family was still reeling yesterday from the news that friendly fire had killed the pretty public-relations major — whose twin sister, Jessica, was in the Uniondale home with her moments before the bloodshed.

“The family is in severe shock over this. This has been the worst,” said Rebello’s godfather, Henry Santos. “When we found out [she was killed by an officer] it was a real second shock . . . like it happened again.”

Nassau police sources insisted Budimlic — a 12-year Nassau veteran who also spent seven years in the NYPD — followed police rules in an impossible situation.

“It was a tragic accident. There’s no reason to believe that any protocol was not followed,” one source said.

“There’s no playbook. You arrive at a home, and the guy has a gun to the victim’s head — what do you do?” the source said. “You rely on your training and your instincts and hope for the best outcome.”

Budimlic and another officer were the first to respond to the early-morning call at the rented California Avenue home where the twins had just returned with a group of pals after toasting their last day of classes.

Authorities said Smith — wanted on a parole violation and fresh off a prison stint for attempted robbery — broke into the home and brandished a gun at the terrified group.

Smith allowed one of the friends, Shannon Thomas, to leave the house, presumably to go to an ATM to get him money, Jessica’s boyfriend, John Kourtessis, told The Post on Saturday.

Instead, Thomas left and called 911 and said the perp was putting a gun to her friends’ heads.

Police responding to a known hostage situation are required to call for backup, a Nassau law-enforcement source said yesterday.

“And under no circumstances should they go through that front door,” the source said.

But — despite radio transmissions mentioning hostages — it wasn’t clear if Budimlic and his partner heard the broadcast, another source said.

The two cops arrived at the house just as Jessica was escaping through the front door, screaming that Smith had a gun.

Budimlic saw movement in the house and stepped inside. Almost instantly, he was separated from his partner when the front door slammed shut and locked the other cop out.

“The officer was trapped inside,’’ a source said of Budimlic.

Budimlic then “hid behind a wall” hoping to surprise Smith, the source said.

When the terrified Kourtessis, hiding behind a couch, suddenly yelled that police were inside the house, Smith pulled Rebello closer and spotted Budimlic, the source said.

“The officer lost the element of surprise” and was alone with no backup, the source said.

The Nassau DA’s Office has been a part of the investigation from the beginning and will receive the results of the inquiries and decide whether anything needs to be presented to a grand jury.

Several people answering the phone at Budimlic’s home hung up on a reporter. Other relatives declined to comment.
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EXCLUSIVE: Hofstra victim's twin sister's boyfriend recounts horrifying experience of being held hostage by LI parolee Dalton Smith - NYPOST.com
Hofstra student John Kourtessis described a chaotic scene of fear and horror when a crazed parolee in a ski mask took his friends and him hostage in a gunpoint siege that ended with the death of a pretty co-ed.

“Somebody in this house f--ked up and owes this Russian guy $10,000,” yelled Dalton Smith, who was on the run after violating parole last month.

“I was trying to calm everyone down, like, ‘Don’t worry, just give the guy what he wants and we’re going to get out of here,’ ” Kourtessis recounted to The Post.

But there was no averting tragedy. Minutes after the incident began, Smith and Andrea Rebello, 21, were dead.

HOFSTRA STUDENT ANDREA REBELLO KILLED BY FRIENDLY FIRE FROM VETERAN COP

GRADUATES WEAR WHITE RIBBONS TO HONOR SLAIN STUDENT

The horror unfolded after a night of drinking at a bar, McHebe’s, a hangout for Hofstra University students where Rebello, her twin sister, Jessica, their friend Shannon Thomas, Andrea’s boyfriend Brad Wilson and Jessica’s boyfriend, Kourtessis, partied to mark the end of the school semester.

“We were supposed to be celebrating because school was out, but Andrea wasn’t having the best night,” said Wilson, 22, a marketing major.

“She just had something bothering her. So I was there, just doing what I could to help make her feel better. I tried making her laugh.”

Wilson broke off from the group at about 2 a.m. after they left the bar. The rest stopped a 7-Eleven for late-night snack and headed to the tiny, two-story house the girls shared in Uniondale, LI.

“We never got a chance to say goodbye,” Wilson said.

At the house, Jessica asked Kourtessis to move his car.

He ran upstairs to get his keys. When he came back down, Kourtessis said, Smith was there, waiting.

Smith kept talking about “the Russian guy,” Kourtessis recalled.

The parolee claimed the house’s residents owed the Russian money, that the Russian was waiting outside and that the debt was due “by the end of the night.”

His claims made no sense to anyone, but Smith’s semiautomatic gun was hard to ignore.

Kourtessis said he found himself in a kind of survival mode.

“I didn’t hear screaming,” he recalled. “I just don’t remember hearing screaming. I had tunnel vision.”

Kourtessis tried to appease Smith. “He was saying . . . that he just needed us to cooperate. I said, ‘Listen, we have all this money here.’ ”

They offered up the computers, jewelry and other items in the house, Kourtessis said, explaining to the thug, “This is worth $3,000, this is worth $1,500, we’re almost there.”

Andrea, Jessica and Thomas were crying. Smith kept demanding more money. But none of the young people had enough to satisfy him.

“So he says. ‘Where’s the jewelry?’ ” Kourtessis recalled.

They moved upstairs, menaced all the while by Smith’s gun.

The crook asked who had money in the bank. Shannon said she could get $700 from an ATM. Smith told her to go get it.

Shannon ran from the house, drove off and called 911.

Moments later, in the house, Andrea, Jessica and John heard a noise outside. Thinking Shannon had returned, Jessica went to the door. Instead, Jessica found police officers — so she ran to safety.

Realizing the police had arrived, Smith freaked out.

“I can’t go back to jail! One of you, get over here,” Smith said, according to Kourtessis’ account.

“So I get up and come over and he puts me down with the gun to the back of my head,” Kourtessis said. “He said, ‘Show them your hands and tell the cops to get out of there.’ Then he does the same to Andrea.”

Smith, whose rap sheet lists robbery and assault charges dating to 1999, asked for a way out of the house.

Kourtessis offered an escape route. “Crawl and show me,” Smith commanded.

Slowly, Kourtessis made his way down the stairs, making a left at the bottom.

“I see an officer there, with his gun out, standing by the steps. So I’m thinking, ‘Good, there’s a cop there,’ ” he said.

“I run behind the L-shaped couch and I see the cop pointing his gun toward the TV.”

Smith also made his way down the stairs — holding Andrea in a headlock and using her as a human shield, police said. The officer began talking to Smith, saying, “Put the gun down and let the girl go.”

“I’m going to kill her,” Smith replied. Kourtessis ran into a bedroom. Then he heard the shots.

“I hear ‘pop, pop’ — two shots,” he said. “I run out and I run toward where they are.”

By then the cop had maneuvered the criminal into the basement area of the home, said Kourtessis. He then watched as the officer shot twice more. He saw other officers outside, and dropped to the floor.

“Andrea! Andrea!” he screamed.

But Andrea didn’t answer.

Both Smith and Andrea were felled by bullets fired by a Nassau officer, cops said.

Records show Smith, 30, was released from prison in February after serving more than 8 years in the slammer for attempted armed robbery, and cops said he quickly violated parole, prompting a warrant for his arrest.

The career criminal also served time previously for crimes including auto theft.

After the shooting, cops swarmed into the house, handcuffed Kourtessis and began a search.

The stunning episode just days before Hofstra’s commencement sent shock waves through the school.

Andrea’s family huddled at their Westchester home, refusing to comment to media as visitors brought food and flowers. Four detectives visited the family late yesterday.

For Wilson, it was a tragic end to his 2 1/2-year romance with the beautiful young woman from Tarrytown.

“Andrea had the biggest, brightest smile and she was so smart. She practically lived in the library, always into her books and studying hard.

Andrea had planned to soon move from the home where she died.

“I really wish she moved out sooner,” said Wilson.

“She had so much love and she showed it to everyone. She was pure and innocent and deserved everything good in this world. I will never forget about her, and she will always have a big piece of my heart.”
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Andrea Rebello Update: Family of accidentally slain Hofstra Univ. student criticizes police - Crimesider - CBS News
(CBS/AP) The godfather of a Hofstra University student accidentally killed by police during a standoff with a masked intruder in a Long Island home says the officer should have negotiated with her hostage taker instead of shooting.

PICTURES: Slain Hofstra University student Andrea Rebello

Andrea Rebello, 21, was killed by a police officer's bullet during a Friday standoff at her shared house near the school's Uniondale, N.Y. campus. Police responding to the report of a home invasion robbery found Rebello held in a headlock by the intruder, who had a gun pointed at her head, authorities have said.

Police say when the intruder pointed his gun at an officer, the officer shot eight times - with seven rounds hitting the suspect, Dalton Smith, who died, and one hitting Rebello, killing her.

Henrique Santos, Rebello's godfather, issued a statement Monday outside the family's home in Westchester County, N.Y.

"I think the police is[sic] not very professional," Santos said of the accidental shooting. "If he's professional, he should have tried negotiation."

Santos also said, "He should have hit the guy with the first shot, not eight."

When it comes to hostage situations, experts say that police officers often have "bare bones" training and are faced with life-or-death decisions in a matter of seconds.

"Once he grabs the girl, literally the whole situation is condensed to nano seconds and the officer and his partner have to make decisions nobody's really equipped to make under those circumstances," said Eugene O'Donnell, a former New York City police officer and professor of law and police studies at John Jay College.

A key question is whether the officers responding to the house near the Hofstra campus at 2:30 a.m. Friday were aware the intruder was holding hostages. However, it wasn't immediately clear what the officers knew when they entered the home. Police officials described the initial report as simply a robbery in progress.

In hostage situations, police are trained to call for backup - like SWAT teams or a hostage negotiator -- isolate the scene and buy time until more resources arrive, experts say.

Edward Mamet, who spent 40 years as a New York City police officer and appears as an expert witness on police procedure, said if the responding officers knew hostages were inside the house, they should have taken a cautious approach and waited for back-up.

"Unless it's clearly indicated that the lives of hostages and any bystanders are in jeopardy," Mamet said. "If that's the case, then everything goes out the window."

Because no two hostage scenarios are alike, O'Donnell said, training officers for them can prove difficult. And without solid details from the scene, police can sometimes be "flying blind," he said.

"The police really have the very bare bones protocol and guidance on these things," O'Donnell said. "So you're talking about a bad situation in which the police are going to an emergency and at best they have heresay on the radio call."

One of the two officers who entered the home found the intruder holding the 21-year-old Rebello in a headlock and he "kept saying `I'm going to kill her,' and then he pointed the gun at the police officer," said Nassau county homicide squad Lt. John Azzata. That's when the officer, who has not been identified, fired eight times, fatally striking the 30-year-old Smith with seven shots and Rebello with one shot to the head.

Smith, who had a 9 mm pistol, never fired a shot, police said.

Nassau County Police Commissioner Thomas Dale said the criminal investigation is ongoing and an internal police department investigation will follow. A spokesman for the district attorney's office said Monday it also was monitoring the police investigation.
Making a judgment call on whether the officer acted appropriately will require more investigation and more details regarding exactly what happened on the scene, said David Klinger, a former patrol officer at the Los Angeles and Redmond, Wash. Police departments and an associate professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

"You have to have fine grain information about what was going on on the ground before you can analyze it and say, this was correct, this was incorrect," Klinger said.

When it comes to the number of shots fired, there's no "magic number" when a police officer is confronted with a dangerous assailant, O'Donnell said.

"No matter how well you fire in a range, this is a different kind of shooting...this is your worst kind of police situation where a civilian is directly in a life and death situation."

Andrea Rebello's funeral is Wednesday.
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I was re-thinking about it during my lunch break at work last night. Jiro is right on the spot. When hostages are involved, the officer should back off if he doesn't know how to negotiate and should call for a hostage negotiator. The officer is currently on sick leave because he feels sick about his screw-up involving the dead innocent girl.

In hostage situations, police are trained to call for backup - like SWAT teams or a hostage negotiator -- isolate the scene and buy time until more resources arrive, experts say.
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Foxrac said:
lol, NY has ridiculous gun control law and I think that LEO are exempted from those law.

NY needs tighten the training requirement and order all NYC LEO to re-train.
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That's a loooot of money. Statistically you'd save more lives putting that money into safer roads. You can't train every cop for every situation. If you want to improve safety for this sort of thing people would be better off taking their personal security as their own responsibility.
 
jonnyghost said:
That's a loooot of money. Statistically you'd save more lives putting that money into safer roads. You can't train every cop for every situation. If you want to improve safety for this sort of thing people would be better off taking their personal security as their own responsibility.
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exactly why NYC's gun ban law is a failure.
 
jonnyghost said:
That's a loooot of money. Statistically you'd save more lives putting that money into safer roads. You can't train every cop for every situation. If you want to improve safety for this sort of thing people would be better off taking their personal security as their own responsibility.
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Not everyone are capable to defend with firearm - that why police need go re-train.

All cops are required to be trained to handle the situation, especially in hostage.
 
Foxrac said:
Not everyone are capable to defend with firearm - that why police need go re-train.

All cops are required to be trained to handle the situation, especially in hostage.
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no. that's not a realistic solution. it's infeasible. that's why a police protocol says to secure the perimeter and call the hostage negotiator and SWAT in case of hostage situation.

NYPD is investigating whether or not if the police officer broke the protocol.
 
Jiro said:
no. that's not a realistic solution. it's infeasible. that's why a police protocol says to secure the perimeter and call the hostage negotiator and SWAT in case of hostage situation.

NYPD is investigating whether or not if the police officer broke the protocol or not.
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8 shots seems too much and very rookie - very unbelievable about what police officer was doing like that.

Previously, I was confident that all police officers are well trained but that's not true anymore.
 
Foxrac said:
8 shots seems too much and very rookie - very unbelievable about what police officer was doing like that.

Previously, I was confident that all police officers are well trained but that's not true anymore.
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People are tougher than most think. There have be many who have taken more than 8 shots to the center of mass and kept fighting. They may die later but it doesn't always take them out of the fight.
 
jonnyghost said:
People are tougher than most think. There have be many who have taken more than 8 shots to the center of mass and kept fighting. They may die later but it doesn't always take them out of the fight.
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It doesn't look right to me - that's very rookie to have 8 shots.
 
Foxrac said:
Not everyone are capable to defend with firearm - that why police need go re-train.

All cops are required to be trained to handle the situation, especially in hostage.
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Safety starts before the conflict. It's always better to avoid a situation before it happens. Even if you choose not to use a firearm there are many ways to increase your safety.
 
Foxrac said:
It doesn't look right to me - that's very rookie to have 8 shots.
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It's impossible to say what kind of target he had with the facts we have right now but it's likely he couldn't shoot center of mass for a few of the shots. Shot hitting less vital areas may have had minimal affect.

This guy survived being shot 4 time, 3 times in the chest
Jersey City man survives being shot three times in chest, once in wrist | NJ.com

man shot 8 times and survives
Man Survives Being Shot 8 Times - New York News | NYC Breaking News

woman shot 8 times survives
Testimony begins in trial of man accused of shooting wife 8 times | www.ajc.com
 
jonnyghost said:
It's impossible to say what kind of target he had with the facts we have right now but it's likely he couldn't shoot center of mass for a few of the shots. Shot hitting less vital areas may have had minimal affect.

This guy survived being shot 4 time, 3 times in the chest
Jersey City man survives being shot three times in chest, once in wrist | NJ.com

man shot 8 times and survives
Man Survives Being Shot 8 Times - New York News | NYC Breaking News

woman shot 8 times survives
Testimony begins in trial of man accused of shooting wife 8 times | www.ajc.com
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The survival rate is much lower if bullet hits head or heart/lung area.
 
jonnyghost said:
It's impossible to say what kind of target he had with the facts we have right now but it's likely he couldn't shoot center of mass for a few of the shots. Shot hitting less vital areas may have had minimal affect.

This guy survived being shot 4 time, 3 times in the chest
Jersey City man survives being shot three times in chest, once in wrist | NJ.com

man shot 8 times and survives
Man Survives Being Shot 8 Times - New York News | NYC Breaking News

woman shot 8 times survives
Testimony begins in trial of man accused of shooting wife 8 times | www.ajc.com
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well just FYI - these victims were not shot by police. these ammo are likely to be of poor/weaker quality - lower grain count, smaller caliber, etc.

police uses their own ammo and it's stronger.
 
Heart and lung is "center of mass" head shots are difficult and can still bounce off the scull or miss the central nervous system. The only way to truly drop someone is to hit the central nervous system and that is a small target most of which was covered by the hostage. Heart and lung are not necessarily instantly fatal.
 
Jiro said:
well just FYI - these victims were not shot by police. these ammo are likely to be of poor/weaker quality - lower grain count, smaller caliber, etc.

police uses their own ammo and it's stronger.
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Police have the same ammo as anyone else. Some ammo companies had policies about not selling some ammo to non leo but that's long over.
 
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