The family of a man left a quadriplegic when he was shot by an off-duty NYPD cop in a New Jersey road rage clash is suing the department for allowing the alcoholic officer to keep his service weapon while on a violent “downward spiral.”
Kishan Patel, 30, was driving home on May 17 when he had the misfortune of idling next to ticking “time bomb” NYPD Officer Hieu Tran at a light near Route 73 and Cooper Road in Camden County, the suit says. Tran was arrested on June 6, charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and weapons possession and is awaiting trial in Camden Criminal Court.
New Jersey police say Tran, 27, pulled his service weapon and opened fire on Patel’s pickup truck in a fit of road rage. Surveillance footage shows Patel speeding away in a panic, his truck riddled with bullets, before crashing into another vehicle while Tran drives off.
Tran was returning from a wedding and later claimed he didn’t remember what happened with Patel because he had too much to drink.
“After leaving Patel to bleed uncontrollably in the cab of his pickup truck, Officer Tran calmly drove north, stopped for gas, went home to New York, reloaded his weapon and went to work the next day like nothing had happened,” the lawsuit filed by Patel’s family charges. “Officer Tran was also found to have been conducting internet searches to learn about the shooting.”
Defendants in the federal lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, include New York City, Tran, Mayor Adams, several unnamed NYPD officers and former NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban, who resigned last month amid an FBI probe into allegations that his twin brother was selling security favors to nightclubs.
Patel suffered massive brain and spinal cord injuries from both the shooting and the crash, his attorney Joseph Marrone wrote in court papers. Since the shooting, he’s been left a quadriplegic and required “round-the-clock medical care.”
During his detention hearing in Camden County Criminal Court, prosecutors said Tran suffers from PTSD and alcoholism. A psychologist examined Tran, who determined the young cop was on a “downward spiral,” prosecutor Peter Gallagher said, according to court transcripts attached to the lawsuit.
“The doctor goes on the opine that, ‘It seems inevitable that something tragic was impending in his life based upon his physical, psychological and emotional deterioration,’” Gallagher said in court. “So if I read this correctly, the doctor’s essentially opining that this was almost inevitable that this defendant was going to do something awful.”
“(Tran) was a powder keg or a time bomb waiting to go off,” Gallagher added. “Chillingly, judge, this victim, Kishan Patel, by all appearances this defendant had never even met before the crime before this occurred. This victim just had the misfortune to be driving down the same road as the defendant while the defendant was driving home armed.”
Tran was ordered held without bail during his arraignment proceeding in June.
Despite the cop’s problems, neither the NYPD nor the city took any steps to disarm Tran or force him to get help, Marrone said. Instead, he was just “advised” to get treatment, the lawsuit states.
“The NYPD did nothing to prevent Officer Tran from taking his NYPD issued weapon and using it to commit acts of violence and mayhem,” Marrone wrote.
Judge Michael Joyce noted during the arraignment proceeding that Tran’s “Commanding officer in New York PD told him to get treatment for (his alcoholism) and (he) didn’t do it,” according to the transcript.
“(They) knew that Tran had significant mental health challenges with longstanding alcoholism, despite his being only twenty-seven years old,” the lawsuit states. “Somehow, he was accepted into the NYPD and armed with a service pistol, but soon became a ‘problem officer’ who needed to be taken ‘off the street.’”
After three years with the department, Tran was moved from a Harlem precinct to the social media team of the NYPD’s press office but was still allowed to be armed.
“The failure of the (city and the NYPD) to adopt and/or enforce adequate policies, procedures, and practices to address a longstanding problem of alcohol and substance abuse by its police officers, while both on-duty and off-duty, constituted deliberate indifference and was a proximate cause of Plaintiffs’ injuries,” Marrone said.
Besides Patel, a woman in another car struck by the pickup truck was injured in the crash, officials said.
An email to the city’s Corporation Counsel was not immediately returned.