NY dad says cop fatally stalled girl's ride to hospital
Family claimed the man denied knowing CPR, in which all NYPD officers are trained
By Michael Blaustein and Jamie Schram
The New York Post
NEW YORK — A sobbing father said it was definitely an NYPD cop who fatally delayed his 11-year-old asthmatic daughter's desperate dash to a hospital - but police cast doubt on the grieving family's claims.
Michael Ojeda said yesterday his daughter, Briana, died after a uniformed officer in a police cruiser tried to box in a car driven by his wife, Carmen, as she tried to rush to Long Island College Hospital.
"He was NYPD from the 76th Precinct. It was right on the side of the car," Ojeda told The Post.
But police showed photos of all the officers in the precinct to Carmen Ojeda and other witnesses, "and none has been picked out," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.
Briana was playing in Carroll Park in Carroll Gardens on Friday when she suffered an asthma attack, according to the family.
Her mother managed to drive her within three blocks of the hospital when she hit a parked car and flagged down the white marked car for help.
Michael Ojeda said he has a radio scanner and heard the cop who stopped his daughter misrepresent what happened when he called other officers.
Scott Voloshin, a good Samaritan who performed CPR on Briana, later insisted the man who stopped the family was an NYPD officer.
But Browne noted that the family claimed the man denied knowing CPR, in which all NYPD officers are trained.
The department "has not yet determined whether he was an NYPD officer or some other uniformed individual, such as an auxiliary [cop] or a traffic agent or a lookalike entity," he said.
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