"...Lt. Panzarella, 62 years old with 41 years on the force, retired yesterday after being everything from street cop to homicide detective to chief of the Queens Cold Case Squad.
"We had . . . a case where the guy was clearly a case of suicide by police," he recalled.
"There was no talking. He came out of an apartment . . . blazing with a shotgun . . . Emergency Service guys couldn't get a clear shot at him because they were shooting over their protective shields."
The cops wounded the psycho, but Phil laughed when he recalled, "Later, he told us, 'If I had known you guys were such bad shots, I would have done the job myself.' "
Like so many cops, he's had his moments when he thought the end was certainly near.
Martin Yamin, former Circuit Court judge from Baltimore, went to the dark side and became a stick-up man.
Panzarella remembers their confrontation:
"At the top of one flight of stairs, this guy appears above us and has a clear shot. He pulls the trigger, nothing. We take him down."
Luckily, the trigger guard jammed - or else we'd have lost one of our best."
Many who attempt suicide-by-cop are similarly unimpressed, and "Please stop shooting me, it hurts," is a fairly common plea. The weapon Martin Yamin used on the day in question was an illegally modified Ruger Mini 14. It did not have a trigger guard. The cartridge hung up and failed to chamber. After 41 years, Phil Panzarella was famous for two things. He could talk the white off of freshly fallen snow, and didn't know a gun from a broomstick. In other words, typical NYPD.
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