The Bronx resident who wounded a police officer after a home health aide rejected his romantic advances was killed by NYPD bullets—not a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The medical examiner's officer has determined that 57-year-old Santiago Urena was struck by three rounds fired by cops after he opened fire on Officer Robert Salerno, the Times reports. Urena perished after police fired 21 shots and hit him three times, once in the left temple, once in the abdomen and once the right shoulder. Salerno was hit with two rounds in the lower torso. The cop's Kevlar vest stopped a third bullet that would have struck him in the chest. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly visited Salerno in the hospital and said he was in good spirits, though he can't speak because he has a tube down his throat, according to the Post. Instead he's been writing notes calling the officers who pulled him out of the apartment "heroes."
"He drew a diagram showing the apartment, showing the bedroom, showing where he was and when he was hit, when he went down ... [the other officers] had to go into the line of fire to save him," said Kelly. The shooting erupted when police responded to a report of an armed man in the Morrisania Air Rights houses in the South Bronx. The gunman was reportedly angry because a health worker who was caring for his 92-year-old mother wouldn't sleep with him.
