By MURRAY WEISS, LARRY CELONA and LUKAS I. ALPERT
Last updated: 8:09 pm
October 2, 2008
Posted: 7:52 am
October 2, 2008
The cop whose order to use a Taser turned tragic took his own life today - his 46th birthday and the day of the victim's funeral - saying he felt he had "disgraced his family," police said.
Lt. Michael Pigott was found at around 6 a.m. in the third-floor locker room of the Emergency Services Unit headquarters in Brooklyn with a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head, police said.
Pigott had been stripped of his badge and gun since Iman Morales toppled to his death after being Tasered Sept. 24.
The cop went into the HQ building at Floyd Bennett Field around 4 a.m. and broke into a colleague's locker, taking a 9 mm Glock handgun.
He placed photos of his wife and three children around himself and sat staring out the window at Jamaica Bay for some time before taking his own life, sources said.
When he was found, a suicide note lay by his side in which he apologized to his family and expressed remorse for how Morales died.
"He didn't want his family to see him cuffed up and jailed," said a source familiar with the contents of the note. "The guy felt he disgraced his family."
Pigott - a 21-year NYPD veteran with an unblemished record - also took full responsibility for Morales' death and urged police officials "not to blame the other officer," whom he had ordered to fire the Taser.
Pigott was placed on modified duty following the incident.
He had ordered Morales - who was standing nude atop a security gate in Bedford-Stuyvesant about 10 feet above the ground - to be Tasered when the mentally ill man began waving an 8-foot-long fluorescent bulb.
After being jolted, Morales toppled head-first onto the pavement, landing with a sickening thud as his mother and dozens of other witnesses watched. He later died from head injuries. The horrifying episode was captured on videotape and in photographs that were then widely broadcast.
NYPD brass said Pigott had apparently violated departmental rules for use of a Taser, which state that it should not be used when the target is on an elevated surface.
