A police officer was fighting for his life Tuesday after an East Harlem man described as mentally ill stabbed him in the head with a three-and-a-half-inch blade, officials said.
Officer Eder Loor, 28, was in critical condition Tuesday afternoon at Mount Sinai Hospital, where doctors were "cautiously optimistic" for his recovery, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
"The blade punctured his brain," Kelly said.
Loor and his partner, Officer Lukson Merisme, were responding to a call at 10:30 a.m. from a woman who said her emotionally disturbed son needed to be hospitalized. The officers met the woman, Vearry Hale, outside of her Third Avenue apartment building and found her son, Terrance Hale, 26, in the lobby, police said.
The officers offered to escort Hale to the hospital, but he refused, according to authorities. Without warning, he allegedly stabbed Loor in the left temple and then ran north on Third Avenue, police said.
Merisme "thought [Loor] was punched. He didn't see a knife, but a knife was produced at the scene," Kelly said.
Merisme, along with other officers who responded to the bloody scene, nabbed Hale at the corner of East 109th Street. He was arrested with assault charges pending, Kelly said. Hale's rap sheet includes busts for robbery and assault.
"Today is another reminder that in a split second, a police officer's life can be placed in great jeopardy," Kelly said.
Loor, a father of a young daughter, joined the NYPD in 2006. He and his wife are expecting a son in July.
"He's certainly not out of the woods yet, and we really won't know for a few hours," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday afternoon.
Copyright 2012 - amNewYork, New York
