New York Daily News

Finest savior

Cop talks man out of shooting self at hotel I told him that no matter what was bothering him right now, it wasn’t as bad as what he was planning to do.

- BY LAURA DIMON and ROCCO PARASCANDO­LA

COPS RACED to a Tribeca hotel early Tuesday after a frantic mother called — getting there just in time to save a man holding a gun to his head from taking his life, police sources said.

The mom called 911 from Virginia at 1:55 a.m., saying her 26-year-old son, who came to New York on business Saturday, was going to kill himself, the sources said. She tracked the man, who is bipolar and suffers from depression, through his phone to the Sheraton Tribeca New York Hotel on Canal St.

Officers Theodore Plevritis and Benedict Vultaggio from the 1st Precinct went to the man’s room and knocked on the door. Twice he told police to leave, but they entered using a key and found the man sitting on the edge of the bed with a loaded revolver pointed at his head.

His finger, Plevritis said, was on the trigger.

“We were very close to his firearm and he could’ve turned it on us at any point,” Plevritis said. “I just started talking to him . . . . I asked him how old he was and what was so bad that could make him do this. He said it was just everything and that he was tired of everything.

“I told him that no matter what was bothering him right now, it wasn’t as bad as what he was planning to do.”

The 10-year police veteran described the experience as “a blur,” but recalled pleading with the despondent man.

“I asked him to, ‘Please, please put the gun down,’ and he finally did,” Plevritis said.

At that point, the cop approached the frightened, crying suspect and kicked the gun over to Vultaggio. Plevritis said the gun belongs to the suspect’s mother and he took it from her safe.

The man was charged with gun possession after being taken to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatri­c observatio­n. Plevritis said he has no specific training in talking people out of suicide, relying instead on “personal experience from doing the job every day.”

“I’m just happy that it worked out in the best possible way,” he said. “It’s a good feeling that somebody lived that a lot of people in his life were concerned wouldn’t.”

In 2009, Plevritis and another officer helped a woman deliver a baby girl in a cab in lower Manhattan.

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Coney Island snake charmer Stephanie Torres and Tim Porter tie knot in Times Square on Tuesday, joined by 2-year-old son Gunner. Edgar Sandoval With Reuven Blau
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