Bleeding from the bullet wounds, Sgt. James Rector fired 11 rounds and mortally wounded Eric Hines as the teen was still trying to pull the trigger of his handgun, police and witnesses said.
Rector, a 34-year-old father of two, was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was in stable condition with bullet wounds in the left ankle and buttocks.
Mayor Bloomberg hailed Rector as a hero, saying, "Despite already being hit, he displayed incredible clarity of mind and coolness literally under fire that few of us could hope to muster."
The wild shootout occurred about 7:30 p.m. at the Walt Whitman Houses in Fort Greene, where Rector, a decorated 11-year veteran of the force, supervises a recruitment center.
Investigators said Rector had just finished his tour and was headed home when he heard shouting and gunfire coming from outside 14 Auburn Place.
"I saw people running, then I heard them yelling, 'They shooting! They shooting!' " said witness Charles Davis, 16.
Rector ran toward the violence and found an unidentified 26-year-old man on his knees begging for his life, police said. Hines was holding his .40-caliber gun at the man's head, apparently ready to fire, police said.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Rector identified himself as a cop and told Hines to freeze - only to have the teen wheel around, shoot and hit him twice.
The first bullet hit Rector's ankle and spun him around. The second hit him in the buttocks.
But Rector somehow steadied himself and nearly emptied his 9-mm. handgun, hitting Hines in the chest and leg.
Amid the chaos, a young boy grabbed Hines' gun and ran with it into 14 Auburn Place, police said.
When heavily armed cops entered the building, an ammo clip and packets of crack cocaine were tossed from a window, police said. Cops later led four men and a woman out of the building in handcuffs.
Investigators said they also found cocaine and marijuana in Hines' pockets.
The 26-year-old man who had been held at gunpoint by Hines was taken to Lutheran Medical Center, where he was in stable condition with a leg wound.
Detectives were questioning him and hunting for another unidentified man who ran to a car during the shootout and sped off. The car was found abandoned in Queens last night.
Hines' father, Eric Pitt, 38, a construction worker, said his son had just left his grandmother's apartment in the housing project "when some guys jumped out of a black car and started arguing with him. That's when the bullets started to fly."
"They killed my little man, my baby," Pitt said. "I don't even know who shot him. Nobody will tell me anything."
But a neighborhood resident said he believes the shooting was drug-related.
"One guy was from Walt Whitman, and the other was from the Ingersoll Houses" across the street, the resident said. "One carries a gun, the other carries a gun, both of them have a beef and this is what happens."
Where does one begin...
Getting shot in the ankle does not spin one around. Anyone who's been in a gunfight knows what really went down. The officer did not have a round in the chamber, realized this, turned for cover and/or concealment in order to jack one into the pipe, was hit in the ass then turned back and managed, somehow, to crank out 11 and hit the bad guy twice. A white officer shoots at a black man nearly a dozen times and the headline is quite different, by the way. You can look it up by googling Amado Dialo.
And please now; you expect me to believe that both the shooter and the man he was going to execute had guns? In NYC. Where it is against the law?
Baloney. The gun laws make that a virtual impossibility.
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