Sanitation Department Environmental Police Lieutenant Joseph Perrone poses at his Brooklyn office. (Scott Axelrod for the Staten Island Advance)
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Taking advantage of the warm Wednesday evening weather to pick up some burgers from Duffy’s Tavern in West Brighton, Sanitation Department Environmental Police Lt. Joseph Perrone soon found himself fighting alongside retired NYPD detective Marty Graham to subdue suspect Thomas McCauley, who’d allegedly just shot and wounded an EMT before bolting out the back door of an ambulance.
“I turned the corner at Forest and Bement, and heard the female EMT screaming, ‘He just shot my partner,’” said Perrone, 45, of West Brighton. “I told my family to go back home and I immediately went over to assist.”
With no handcuffs, Perrone and Graham wrestled with McCauley on the ground until they were able to keep him down.
Perrone then made sure to move the nearby gun, a .38-caliber revolver, out of McCauley’s reach. Perrone added that McCauley was mumbling incoherently, could barely stand and was clearly intoxicated.
“Once we had him under control, I made the decision to secure the firearm,” Perrone said. The gun was lying in the street after the tussle with the EMT. “If [McCauley] wanted to break free and grab it again, you could see that there were more bullets in the chamber,’' Perrone said.
The evening’s bizarre altercation began when EMT Richard McMahon, 25, and his female partner, responded to a call of a disorderly person outside of the Funky Monkey Lounge, located at 1205 Forest Ave. at 7:41 p.m., said NYPD Inspector Mark Molinari, the commanding officer of Detective Borough Staten Island.
The EMT crew saw McCauley, 37, in front of the bar and placed him in the back of ambulance. While in the back of the vehicle traveling down Forest Avenue, McCauley allegedly pulled out a gun and fired one round inside the ambulance, striking McMahon in the shoulder, police said.
Charges are currently pending against McCauley, while McMahon was treated and discharged from Richmond University Medical Center in West Brighton Thursday afternoon to a hero’s welcome and applause from hospital officials, NYPD officers, fellow EMTs and local law enforcement officials.
Perrone doesn’t consider himself a hero and joked that he’s done better things at home, raising his two daughters.
The 22-year veteran of the DSNY Environmental Police, Perrone is part of a specialized arm of the DSNY whose members are responsible for responding to cases that can be considered Hazmat situations — the spilling or release of chemicals, radioactive and/or biological materials inside of buildings or out in the environment.
“It’s a short story and it ended very quickly,” Perrone said of the Wednesday’s event, with a shrug. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat; It’s my community. My co-workers will be busting my chops tomorrow, so nothing really changes.”
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