NJ man shot by trooper says he still supports police '100 percent'
Gerald Sykes is 76. He still has three bullets in him from when a state trooper - who responded to his home two weeks ago after a 911 call was mistakenly traced there - shot him. And he's pretty sore.
Gerald Sykes is 76. He still has three bullets in him from when a state trooper - who responded to his home two weeks ago after a 911 call was mistakenly traced there - shot him. And he's pretty sore.
But he likes to get out and move around. So what's the first thing Sykes did when he returned to his rural home this week, following stays at Cooper University Hospital and his stepdaughter's home?
Mow the lawn.
"That's why they call me tough," Sykes said Friday by phone from his house in Upper Deerfield Township, Cumberland County, where the glass door that the trooper shot through is boarded up, awaiting new glass.
When Sykes and his wife, Margot, 80, saw shadowy figures on their back porch just after 11:30 p.m. on July 29, they thought there were prowlers, as Sykes described them to 911 dispatchers.
So he grabbed a shotgun and walked into the living room, which connects to the porch through the glass door.
Then, the family and his attorney have said, three bullets from one trooper's 9mm service handgun came through the glass and struck him. Sykes fired one shot and fell backward before retreating to the bedroom. He spoke to the 911 dispatchers - calmly - as he lay in bed next to his gun.
"I don't know why, but the entire incident left me very calm," he said Friday. "I don't generally fall to pieces."
Sykes, who maintains radio systems for police departments through the communications company he owns, said he had gotten to know chiefs and other officers well, and supports police "100 percent."
"I always was on the police's side," he said. "Where would we be without them?"
At the same time, he said, recalling the July 29 encounter, "incidents like this really shouldn't happen."
Sykes said he could not discuss the incident in more detail, on the request of his attorney, Rich Kaser.
Authorities dispatched two troopers to Sykes' home after mistakenly tracing to that location a disconnected 911 call in which the caller did not speak. Only one of the troopers shot Sykes.
The state Attorney General's Office, which is investigating the incident, has not said where the disconnected 911 call came from or who made it, or why authorities thought it originated in Sykes' home.
Kaser said Thursday he believed the original call bounced off a cellphone tower next to Sykes' home before disconnecting. Kaser said the call was made from within Cumberland County, but more than a mile from Sykes' house.
The Attorney General's Office, in an earlier statement, said that troopers had knocked on Sykes' front door and that when they heard no response, approached a sliding-glass door in the back and knocked there. They shined flashlights into the house and announced they were responding to a 911 call.
Sykes' family says neither he nor his wife heard knocks.
Two bullets struck Sykes in the chest and one in the upper groin.
Kaser and Sykes' family have said that the trooper fired first, and that the family is considering legal action.
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