Nassau County police officer Geoffrey Breitkopf (Courtesy: NCPD)
Nassau County police have identified the officer killed on Saturday night in Massapequa Park in an apparent accidental shooting as Geoffrey Breitkopf, a 12-year veteran of the force.
A suspect who was also killed, police said, after he lunged at cops with big Rambo-type knives, was identified as Anthony DiGeronimo of Massapequa Park.
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Police responded to a call of a suspicious man with weapons on Front Street and when officers arrived, DiGeronimo ran into his house and barricaded himself in a back bedroom at about 8:20 p.m., police said. Officers evacuated his mother and father from the house.
Soon after, DiGeronimo lunged at cops with Rambo-type knives and was shot dead. At around the same time the suspect was killed, another shot went off outside the house and that’s when police said the Breitkopf was wounded.
Breitkopf, 40, a member of the Bureau of Special Operations, was taken to Nassau University Medical Center where he died at 9:20 p.m., police said.
Theresa Kelly, 71, who lives on Front Street, first alerted police when the DiGeronimo jumped on her car as she was backing out of the driveway.
She said he was wearing a black, studded leather jacket, with chains, and a white mask covering only half his face with slits for his eyes. She described him as “gothic” and said he was holding a six-inch hunting knife.
Kelly said she screamed and then heard the man laugh. She followed DiGeronimo down the block and called 911.
Kelly was still at the scene when police arrived and overheard the commotion inside the house. “All I heard them say was ‘put down the knife, put down knife’ and all hell broke loose,” Kelly told the Press.
“Don’t shoot my son, don’t shoot my son, you don’t understand,” Kelly said she overheard the suspects father say as police were in the house.
Breitkopf is the second to die in the line of duty this year since 1993. Michael Califano, a highway patrolman was killed on Feb. 4 when the driver of a flatbed truck, John Kaley, 25, of New Britain, Conn., collided into his parked police cruiser. Kaley was arrested soon after the crash and charged with criminally negligent homicide.
And in another violent incident in Nassau County earlier this month, a gunman was killed by police after he shot an EMT responding to the suspect’s car crash in Bellmore. Justin Angell, 20, the wounded EMT was released from the hospital two days after he was shot.
