Conn. Officer Crushed by Fleeing Thief Eager to Return to Duty

The second worst pain that Farmington police Officer James O’Donnell ever endured came when medics lifted him onto a stretcher after he was crushed between his cruiser and a car driven by a fleeing suspect.

Even greater agony flared soon after when emergency room staff turned O’Donnell on his side to check his injuries from the Sept. 20 confrontation with a man suspected of stealing catalytic converters.

RELATED:

In an interview at his home Wednesday, O’Donnell said he does not remember pointing his gun at Pedro Acevedo, the New Britain man who faces first-degree assault and other charges, although police video shows the 31-year-old cop holding the weapon with arms extended.

O’Donnell said the incident is behind him, and he is looking toward resuming patrol duty in March.

“When the detectives told me they had the guy, I didn’t care about that night from then on,” the married father of two young children said. “I knew he would get his day in court.”

O’Donnell had a second surgery to repair his smashed pelvis on Tuesday. He is on the mend, walking with a slow shuffle and able to hold his baby daughter and toddler son. For the rest of his life, however, he will have a screw in his sacrum, the triangular bone between the hips and just above the tailbone.

O’Donnell said a Farmington police lieutenant who was with him in the emergency room asked for all to hear, “So you’re saying he broke his ass?”

“I had to laugh,” he said, “and it hurt to laugh.”

On the three-year anniversary of his police academy graduation, the 31-year-old patrol officer was talking to his sergeant, window to window in their parked cruisers in the early morning dark when they got a call from a condominium complex that thieves were cutting catalytic converters.

Police were used to such calls, O’Donnell said, as auto thefts and burglaries in town and throughout the state had increased during the coronavirus pandemic. Usually, police arrived after the thieves were gone or as they fled, and typically, cops would not give chase due to a statewide policy prohibiting pursuits when larceny is the only suspected crime.

Farmington police were focused on proactive patrols, making themselves visible to deter thefts, O’Donnell said. But that night, O’Donnell rolled right up on a masked suspect in the driver’s seat of a stolen white Nissan Altima. Bumper to bumper, he pulled forward and stepped from his cruiser.

“I thought I had him boxed in,” O’Donnell said.

He remembered drawing his gun, but not pointing it, he said, as the next few moments were focused on the suspect surging forward and the excruciating realization that he was being squeezed between two cars. Turning like a top, O’Donnell fell at the rear of his cruiser. He said he tried to crawl to the microphone on his radio, which had been torn off, but found he could not move.

Immediate fears of being paralyzed soon dissolved, however, when he learned he still had feeling in his legs. Still, the pain in his midsection was tremendous. When initial pain medication wore off and staff at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford tried to move him for a second cat scan, O’Donnell said he gripped a hospital worker’s arm and said, “We cannot do this now.”

After 2 1/2 months of healing, surgery and physical therapy, his prognosis is good, and O’Donnell says he expects to return to full duty. The confrontation on Sept. 20 was a bad scene, but it could have been much worse, he said, mentioning a Naugatuck police officer who was hurt in similar circumstances recently.

Lt. Mark Pettinicchi, 47, suffered a shattered left ankle and fractured right ankle and right tibia after being struck by a vehicle in early November. Police had responded to a shoplifting complaint when a getaway driver leading them on a chase struck Pettinicchi, who was directing traffic on Route 63, police have said.

Witnesses told police it seemed the driver intentionally hit the veteran officer. With help from Waterbury and Middlebury police, officers arrested the driver, Stanton Ragar Trent, on charges that include first-degree assault and first-degree robbery.

O’Donnell, who worked as a judicial marshal in Bridgeport court before becoming a police officer, said state policies and laws have empowered criminals, giving them wide latitude to offend again while hamstringing police and holding them personally liable for life or death decisions. Court records show Acevedo, 32, has a long criminal history dating to 2007.

But the Glastonbury native and Penn State graduate said his gaze is forward, and he plans to complete a master’s degree in computer science at the University of New Haven and become a detective focused on digital forensic investigations.

“I won’t let that night affect my decision-making,” he said of the Sept. 20 incident.

O’Donnell paused and added, “But if I decide to box in a car, I’ll do it a little bit better than I did.”

_____

Visit courant.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.