Firefighter Wounded In Staten Island Standoff Released From Hospital
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The Staten Island firefighter who was shot before a chaotic standoff was released from the hospital on Saturday.
Lt. James Hayes, a 31-year veteran of the FDNY, is expected to make a full recovery. Authorities said he was shot twice early Friday morning by a suspected gang member while responding to a fire call at a home on Destiny Court in Mariners Harbor.
Both the mayor and fire commissioner visited Hayes at the hospital and called the father of two a hero.
"Lt. Hayes is a very, very impressive guy – cool, calm, collected. He's making light of his injuries," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday. "Thank God his injuries are limited as they were. And that really is extraordinary given the situation he's in."
"I think he realizes he came very close to not being with us, and seeing his family, he's very happy," Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.
His neighbors are anxious for his return home.
"He's a great family man, he's often outside with his kids taking care of his house," said neighbor Christine Greene. "Very friendly, he says hello all the time."
It all began just before 6 a.m. when a U.S. Marshals regional task force went to arrest 38-year-old Garland Tyree at his girlfriend's home on federal parole violation charges, police said.
But he refused to open the door, officials said, and then ignited a commercial-grade smoke bomb, prompting the officers to call the FDNY.
"As the task force members approached the front door of the basement apartment, they noticed thick smoke coming from the apartment," Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said.
When Hayes went in to fight the fire, police said Tyree shot at him at multiple times. Hayes was struck twice and both bullets exited his body.
"Once through the right buttocks and through the left calf," FDNY Assistant Chief Joseph Pfeifer said.
A member of the task force fired once at the home as he dragged Hayes to safety, officials said. He was rushed to the hospital in stable condition.
An emergency response team was then called and the house was surrounded as hostage negotiators got to work, getting Tyree's sister and girlfriend on the phone and even flying his mother in a police helicopter from Delaware to Staten Island, authorities said.
Over the course of the standoff, Tyree fired his weapon and officers didn't return fire, Bratton said.
After a six-hour standoff, Tyree told his mother over the phone he had agreed to surrender, police said.
"I'm coming out, Mama,'' he said, according to the NYPD's top hostage negotiator, Lt. Jack Cambria.
Instead, Tyree emerged from the apartment armed with a fully automatic AK-47 and began firing "numerous rounds" at police, Chief Harry Wheaton from the NYPD Special Operations Bureau said.
He was wearing a bulletproof vest and his shots struck police cars and a neighbor's house, officials said. Officers returned fire, killing Tyree, police said.
For Tyree, it was a violent end to a violent life, foreseen in a Facebook post at about 7 a.m., after Hayes was shot, when he wrote, "Today I die,'' according to Robert Boyce, the police department's chief of detectives.
Tyree's mother, Roxanne Tyree Purcell, defended her son after his death.
"My son wouldn't want to hurt a firefighter," she said. "I wouldn't think he wanted to hurt nobody."
Tyree was convicted in 1995 of weapons charges connected to a murder and subsequently was convicted of two slashing assaults while in custody -- one with a razor while aboard a correctional bus and another so vicious the other inmate received 60 stitches.
In total, he was arrested 18 times and convicted in 2004 on federal gun charges for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, officials said.
Sources told CBS2 police had recently been investigating Tyree in connection with several homicides in the city.
One year ago, he posted a video on YouTube talking about gang life. He was supposedly affiliated with gang that is a subset of the Bloods and wrote about it in a book.
Tyree had been on parole since last summer and in February surrendered on a warrant at his girlfriend's home without incident, authorities said. He had violated parole before and in a July 2013 letter, federal prosecutors said he attended a 2012 meeting of gang members, used drugs and was paid dues by other gang members.
In a court proceeding, Tyree denied he was still a Blood.
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