News: Nassau County Cop Killed by Friendly Fire
(Long Island, N.Y.) A forty-year-old Nassau County Police Officer was shot and killed by friendly fire Saturday night in Massapequa Park. The twelve-year veteran was responding to a call concerning a twenty-one-year-old man terrorizing the neighborhood with knives. The officer, husband, and father of two was not in uniform and drove an unmarked vehicle when he approached the area with a rifle at his side.
The twenty-one-year-old was allegedly dressed in black leather with chains and spikes, dark clothing, and a hockey mask when he went around the neighborhood slashing cars. He had two large hunting knives with eight-inch blades and multiple knives strapped to his body. He approached a seventy-one-year-old woman at her residence two blocks away from his own.
The shaken woman called emergency services when she feared he wanted to enter her car. The officers who responded were MTA police officers who were in the area fixing a broken elevator at the nearby railroad station. Officers who responded chased the assailant into his home without knowing it was his place of residence.
The same officers ordered the knifeman’s parents to leave the home, still without knowing their relations to the assailant, as the twenty-one-year-old barricaded himself into a room. As the officers approached, he came at them with two knives in the air before they proceeded to shoot him. One officer fired three shots and the other fired four before he was declared dead at the scene.
Less than ten minutes later officer Geoffrey Breitkopf and his partner arrived at the scene. When Breitkopf approached the area he was mistaken for a suspect and was shot by a thirty-three-year-old MTA officer. The bullet entered his chest at roughly eight-thirty that night and was lodged in his left arm; he perished with his family at beside at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow an hour later.
The MTA officer served the force for six years and is currently on sick leave. He has a twin brother who is also an MTA officer, and his late father retired after serving as a Nassau County detective for forty years. The slain officer is survived by his wife, six-year-old, and three-year-old children.
Breitkopf was a volunteer for the Selden Fire Department for fourteen years. His funeral will be held at Friday at noon at Saint Margaret’s of Scotland in Selden. Breitkopf was a part of the Bureau of Special Operations which deals with undercover patrols and aids other police officers in need.
Friends describe him as a dedicated officer and motorcycle lover who went as far as tattooing his unit’s enigma on his chest. Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of the fallen officer and has postponed his State of the County address. This is the second line-of-duty death for a Nassau County cop in less than two months, in addition to the shooting of a Bellmore EMT. On February 5th Nassau County Highway Patrol Officer Michael Califano was killed when a truck plowed into his patrol car that was parked on the shoulder of the Long Island Expressway.
The twenty-one-year-old knifeman, who terrorized the streets of 4th Avenue, causing Breitkopf to respond to the crime, was considered a Satanist and anarchist. Though he had no prior arrests, he had more than twelve knives in his collection. He was once interviewed by authorities for lurking around a notorious drug dealing area. In a separate incident, a New York City Police Officer was killed in Brooklyn while responding to a domestic disturbance call just hours after Breitkopf perished.
