Cop who shot suspect called hero

NEW YORK — New York City police officer Ryan Nash was responding to a call Tuesday about an emotionally disturbed person at a high school not far from the World Trade Center when someone reported an accident on the bike path outside.

Nash and his partner, John Hasiotis, raced to a gruesome sight: A man in a truck had slammed into a school bus after mowing down people in a bike lane. He was waving guns around and yelling. Nash, 28, told him to drop the weapons and then fired once, striking the man.

Nash stopped the attacker, Sayfullo Saipov, in his tracks, officials said.

“He was a hero,” said Gov. Andre Cuomo.

Saipov was actually wielding a pellet gun and a paintball gun, authorities said, but they looked like real guns.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and other civic leaders commended Nash for his cool head.

“What he did was extraordinary. It gave people such faith and such appreciation in our police force,” de Blasio said.

Nash was taken to the hospital for a ringing in the ears.

“In a typical fashion of an NYPD cop, he thinks what he did was not an act of heroism,” O’Neill said. “He thinks it’s ... why he joined the police department.”

No one answered the door at Nash’s home on Long Island on Wednesday. It’s not clear if he could talk publicly because he’d be expected to be a witness in the case.