The highly decorated cop who critically wounded an unarmed teen claims his gun accidentally went off in a struggle over the weapon – an account the victim’s family angrily disputes.
Relatives of Dontae Johnson, 16, are demanding to know why Officer Mark Conway chased the teen, grabbed him by his jacket while he was still in his unmarked police car and pulled out his 9mm handgun.
“The cop said, ‘I’m going to kill you,'” the high-schooler’s mother, Sharon Johnson, said after visiting her son at Lincoln Hospital.
“He was gunned down by a cop for no good reason,” added the teen’s aunt, Deborah James.
Dontae Johnson and a pal, Kyle Thompson, also 16, were arrested, but they were never charged and the arrests were later voided.
The confrontation unfolded at 12:20 a.m. yesterday, when three cops from the embattled Street Crime Unit spotted Johnson and Thompson.
The officers thought the teens were acting strangely, and one adjusted his waist band, a red flag for a possible hidden weapon, police said.
The cops jumped out of the car, and the boys took off.
“This is a black neighborhood. When you see white cops coming after you, you are afraid,” James said.
Sgt. Terrence O’Toole and Officer Michael Fraterrigo ran after Thompson, tackling him on a footbridge over the Major Deegan Expressway.
Conway, 32, chased Johnson in the unmarked car for 100 yards, then reached out and grabbed his collar as he put the vehicle into park – a move police officials described as a tactical mistake.
What happened next is in dispute.
A source close to Conway told The Post the 12-year veteran says he pulled out his gun because Johnson was struggling. The teen grabbed for the weapon and it went off in the scuffle, the source said.
A bus driver at the end of his route, reading a Bible, saw the shooting.
“I see [Conway] reach out of the car, grab the jacket of the boy,” he told probers. “He’s wiggling like he’s trying to get free. I hear a shot and I see the kid go down.”
The bullet hit the car’s side-view mirror, then ricocheted into Johnson’s abdomen, exiting his right buttock. It severed a vein to his leg, causing massive bleeding and damaging his intestines.
Surgeons removed a 4-foot section of his small intestine and a piece of the large intestine. The teen undergoes more surgery today, but should fully recover.
Johnson’s family denies he was at fault.
“Dontae would try to get away, not grab a gun,” James said of the cop’s story.
The NYPD has placed all three officers on administrative duty while the shooting is being investigated.
Johnson is on probation in a case in which he was accused of swiping a wallet from a neighborhood homeless man, who never showed up in court, his family said.
Despite that scrape with the law, they said the Evander Child HS sophomore is not a troublemaker and spends his free time playing basketball, listening to music and sketching.
The Center for Constitutional Rights was called in to advise the family after they were barred from seeing Johnson for several hours until the NYPD voided his arrest.
“By all appearances, this is a 16-year-old kid, unarmed. Why does he end up shot? That’s the big question,” the CCR’s Ron Daniels said.
Conway, who has 155 felony arrests and 83 commendations or citations, had never been involved in a shooting. He’s had one civilian complaint in his career.
PBA trustee Edward Mahoney said Conway waived his right to remain silent for 48 hours after the shooting and offered to tell his story to the NYPD – but the DA’s office told cops that prosecutors would interview him.
“We would have cooperated with the DA right away, but they came in and treated the officer like a criminal,” Mahoney said.
The NYPD and DA said they declined to talk to Conway because his statements could not be used in the criminal investigation.