Coma cop goes home
3 days after deadly salon shoot
The veteran NYPD cop who got bashed in the face with a chair during a deadly nail-salon melee was released from the hospital to cheers and applause from dozens of fellow officers on Monday.
Lesly Lafontant, 53, was greeted with salutes from a semicircle of uniformed and plainclothes cops when he emerged from Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn around noon.
The 21-year NYPD veteran held hands alternately with a young girl and a young boy as family members pushed him in a wheelchair.
Both his eyes appeared swollen shut, but Lafontant waved and blew a chef ’s kiss as the crowd clapped and cheered.
He also exchanged high-fives and shook hands with several cops before being helped into a waiting NYPD van.
NYPD Capt. Craig Edelman — commanding officer of Brooklyn’s 73rd Precinct, where Lafontant is assigned — called the married father of four a “tremendous family man” and “mentor for younger officers” who “epitomizes what a New York City police officer should be.
“He’s an inspiration for all of us,” Edelman said. “I think we have to thank God for him being alive today. It was a very traumatic incident. He took a lot of trauma in his head and neck area.”
Edelman added that while Lafontant faces a “long road” to recovery, “If he wants to come back, he will come back to open arms.”
Lafontant was placed in a medically induced coma after being attacked while trying to handcuff a vagrant accused of urinating inside the Goldmine Nails Spa in Brownsville on Friday.
An unhinged T-shirt vendor, Kwesi Ashun, allegedly entered the salon, grabbed a metal chair and battered the cop with it.
Lafontant’s rookie partner tried to stop Ashun, 33, with a Taser, but the device had no effect, cops have said.
Despite being struck several times, Lafontant managed to fire six rounds at Ashun, who was hit at least once in the head and killed.
Ashun’s sister has told The Post that he had bipolar disorder and that she had sought help when he began “spiraling” out of control 11 days earlier.
But a “mobile crisis team” that’s part of the city’s controversial ThriveNYC mental health program determined that
Ashun wasn’t a threat to himself or others, said his sister, Ama Bartley.
Less than two weeks before his tragic and fatal run-in with the NYPD, Kwesi Ashun was assessed by a city Mobile Crisis Team as a non-threat. His sister says one MCT worker told her, “Call 911 if he turns violent.”
Much of the time, the street vendor was indeed a peaceful soul. But he had a history of attacking police officers, and bipolar syndrome is a complex thing.
In the event, cops responding Friday to a report about another vagrant urinating on the floor of a nail salon somehow triggered Ashun — who hit one officer with a chair, sending him into a coma. That officer shot him, fatally.
No one had a chance to call 911 before it was all over — just as no one could before the latest subway-pusher struck, or the one before that.
Mayor de Blasio announced with great fanfare last week that he’s beefing up the Health Department’s MCTs, while placing them under ThriveNYC as part of a new $37 million plan for mental-health crises.
But, as The Post’s Julia Marsh reported, what the mayor called a “blueprint” was “nothing more than a one-page press release.” A year-and-a-half after convening a task force to produce a report, City Hall had only come up with an outline.
Here’s a start on your next “report,” Mr. Mayor. No city mental-health worker should be telling anyone to rely on 911 as the solution to a loved one’s dangerous mental issues.