The young man whose "sucker-punch" put an off-duty cop into critical condition this week says he was just trying to be a good samaritan. 20-year-old Citi Field hot dog vendor Keith McNeil says he punched Ernest Rodriguez because he appeared to be harassing a group of children. And could walk away with just probation in the case. "My son is a good, f---ing son!" McNeill's mother told reporters after the arraignment. "I've got to get him out of jail."
"I punched him," McNeill told cops, according to prosecutors. "One shot to the chin and he fell to the ground." That blow came after McNeil saw Rodriguez—who was driving with his seven-year-old son, was off duty, unarmed and out of uniform—get out of the car in front of him at a Bronx intersection and menacingly approach a group of kids on the street. Thinking he was threatening the children, McNeil “walked up, they made eye contact, and he punches him without any warning” on the right side of his jaw, according to a detective.
What McNeil—who turned himself in and is already facing charges of robbery, assault and stalking from a separate June 7 incident—didn't see was that moments before "a cup of water or a water-filled balloon" had been thrown onto (and in the passenger window) of Rodriguez's Honda sedan, which is why the officer was approaching the children. It is unclear if he identified himself as a police officer.
However, because Rodriguez's seven-year-old son would reportedly not "make a great witness" prosecutors decided to get McNeil on what charges they could. So on Friday he was arraigned on misdemeanor assault and harassment charge and was given a bail of $2,500, an amount that seriously pissed off the cops: "A good Samaritan would have called the police, and we would not have a police officer in a coma," said Pat Lynch, president of the Policemen's Benevolent Association.
As of last night Rodriguez, a married father of two who joined the force in July 1995, was in "critical but stable condition." He is reportedly surrounded by family and has shown some "heartening" progress since undergoing surgery on Wednesday to relieve pressure on his brain.
