MAN IS ACCIDENTALLY SHOT IN RAID, POLICE SAY

A New York police officer whose father was killed in the line of duty
nearly 30 years ago fired an errant shot on Saturday during a drug
raid in the Bronx and wounded a suspect's 76-year-old father, the
authorities said.

The officer, Andrew McCormack, 37, and other Emergency Service
officers accompanied narcotics officers to 1184 Evergreen Avenue
about 7 a.m. to execute a warrant for the arrest of Alberto Colon,
41, the police said.

They had forced open the door of Apartment 4D when Officer
McCormack's weapon discharged one shot, said a law enforcement
official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the
continuing investigation. The round struck Jose Colon, Alberto
Colon's father, in the abdomen, and he was taken to Jacobi Medical
Center, the authorities said. He was expected to survive.

"We believe he's accidentally struck," the official said. "At this
point, it appears to be an accidental discharge."

Alberto Colon, who the authorities said had been arrested more than a
dozen times, including on narcotics charges, was taken into custody.
In his apartment, in a neighborhood wedged between the Bruckner and
Sheridan Expressways, detectives found a small amount of heroin that
had been packaged for sale, the official said.

Saturday's events will be analyzed by the Police Department's
Firearms Discharge Review Board to determine if they fit within the
guidelines for the use of deadly physical force, the official said.
The office of the Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson, will
also "review the facts and circumstances" of the case, said Steven
Reed, a spokesman for the office.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly later visited Mr. Colon at the hospital.

According to neighbors, Mr. Colon was a respected neighborhood
fixture who directed a drug counseling clinic, dabbled in politics
and joined in street demonstrations against police brutality in the
wake of the 1999 fatal police shooting of Amadou Diallo nearby.

One man said that Alberto Colon, the youngest of Jose Colon's three
sons, worked at a meat market on Hunts Point Road.

Officer McCormack has earned at least five medals since joining the
force in 1998, and like his father, Officer Joseph P. McCormack,
became part of the elite Emergency Service Unit.

He was 10 years old when a mentally disturbed Bronx man shot his
father, in September 1983. The man, Salvatore Ferrara, 33, fired a
shotgun blast that ricocheted off a tree, pierced a fold in the elder
McCormack's bullet-resistant vest and struck him in the heart.

Joseph McCormack was 40 and married with three children when he died.

He had responded with colleagues to 1641 Mulford Avenue, in Pelham
Bay, around 11:25 a.m., after a report that a man with a history of
mental illness had barricaded himself inside.

Officers surrounded the house, but Mr. Ferrara held them off for more
than three hours, the police said. During the standoff, officers were
able to speak with Mr. Ferrara periodically to try to get him to
surrender peacefully. But around 2:50 p.m., Mr. Ferrara stepped out
onto a porch behind the two-family house and fired the shotgun blast
that hit Officer McCormack, who had been standing behind a tree in an
adjoining yard.

The blast was said to have passed through the seams of the officer's
bullet-resistant vest and entered his chest. As he fell, Officer
McCormack fired a shot, but the shot went wild, the police said.