By Caroline Bankoff
In mid-June, NYPD officer
Eugene Donnelly was given the department's second-highest honor, the Police
Combat Cross, for arresting a man who fired at him in 2012. The 27-year-old
decided to celebrate the award with a night of drinking, which is normal
enough. What he did after passing out at a pal's apartment in Woodlawn was less
normal, though definitely not unprecedented.
According to the New York Daily
News, Donnelly woke up sometime in the middle of the night and, wearing only
his underwear, wandered out of a Bronx building. After he went back inside, he
mistook a neighbor's apartment for his friend's place (or something) and broke
down the door. Donnelly then walked into the bedroom of the 30-year-old woman
who lived there, a complete stranger, and punched her more than 20 times in her
bed. He also drank a carton of milk he found in the fridge before fleeing.
Luckily, a surveillance camera
captured some of Donnelly's disturbing late-night episode, and his photo was
distributed around the neighborhood before the NYPD realized that the suspect
was one of their own. The Daily News reports that he was placed on modified
duty and stripped of his gun and badge after the incident. On Monday, he was
finally arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault and burglary, and has now
been suspended without pay. At least he wasn't carrying a weapon when he felt
compelled to attack a random person, unlike that other guy.
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