STRAY-SHOT VIC
She suffers after cop hit her during gunfight
Irene Urena Perez was walking through the Bronx with her mother and a neighbor’s toddler when a police bullet pierced her side.
It happened as she and her mom were bringing their neighbor’s 3-year-old boy home from day care on Loring Place in University Heights about 6:30 p.m. Dec. 5.
“I heard a sound like ‘tan tan tan tan tan,’ ” Urena Perez told the Daily News in an exclusive interview from her hospital bed.
Cops were chasing a masked gunman carrying a drug-laden red backpack who had fired once at them after ripping off a group of drug dealers, authorities said.
Officer Juan Gomez, 30, returned fire while sprinting. He shot 27 times, stopping once to reload.
Bullets pinged off buildings and trash cans. Urena Perez’s first instinct was to protect her neighbor’s tyke.
“I pushed my mom away. I grabbed the boy,” she said. “By the time I grabbed him, I fell down.”
A stray police bullet had slammed into Urena’s side.
“I thought ‘That’s it,’ ” she said. “I said, ‘Mom, they killed me.’ ”
The gunman was shot through the neck and in the foot. A 12-year-old girl walking with her mom was struck by police bullet fragments and survived.
“There were so many shots,” Urena Perez said. “It was like war.”
“It all happened so quickly,” she added. “I didn’t have time to do anything.”
While she was on the ground, she heard a woman nearby screaming.
“I heard voices saying ‘The police killed her! The cops killed her!’” she said.
In the ambulance to St. Barnabas Hospital, medics cut open Urena Perez’s clothes.
“I couldn’t breathe,” she said. “My belly was so swollen.”
The gunman, Edwin Castillo-Concepcion, was taken to the same hospital as Urena Perez in critical condition. He was arraigned Dec. 12 on charges of attempted murder, robbery, assault, weapon possession and drug possession. He is being held without bail in the Vernon C. Bain Center.
Urena Perez has already had three surgeries and remains in significant pain.
“I had surgeries to my stomach, liver, pancreas,” she said. “I’m having problems with my lungs.”
“I don’t know how long I’m gonna be in these conditions,” she added. “I don’t know how I’m gonna pay for this.”
A mother of three, Urena Perez immigrated to New York from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on Oct. 20 to look for child day care work.
“I came here to work, and look what happened to me,” she said. “Justice, that’s what I want. I came here to work, now I cannot do anything.”
Urena Perez has filed a notice of claim seeking $10 million from the NYPD as well as from Officer Gomez and his partner, Brandon Gambecki, 31.