NEW YORK — He was a victim in its truest sense - a 71-year-old bespectacled man who was mugged and nearly choked to death in the subway.
Jerome Sandusky is 79 now, and none the richer for the experience.
"My glasses were broken. My jacket was torn. And I got a bloody nose," Sandusky said. "I never got 10 cents."
The same, though, cannot be said for his attacker, Bernard McCummings. The
Harlem man, now 32 and paralyzed, was awarded $4.3 million on Monday by the New York state Court of Appeals.
In a 4-to-2 decision, the court ruled that McCummings - shot in the back by a New York transit police officer as he fled from the mugging - was a victim of excessive, deadly police force.
Sandusky begs to differ.
"This wasn't just a mugging. This was a case of attempted murder," said Sandusky, who has since moved to Newark, N.J.
"When I tried to holler out to see if anybody was near who could help me, the guy said he would choke me to death if I didn't shut up," he said.
The New York Transit Authority argued unsuccessfully that the officer, Manuel Rodriguez, was justified because he was preventing the flight of a suspected violent felon.
Rodriguez has since retired from the department and could not be reached for comment.
In its decision, the court noted that McCummings claimed he was already down a flight of stairs when he was shot in the back. The gunshot paralyzed McCummings, who served 32 months in prison for the robbery.
McCummings, confined to a wheelchair in a Harlem apartment, is out of the mugging business.
"All the physical evidence showed that McCummings told the truth and the cops created a phony story to cover up a bad shooting," said McCummings' attorney, David Breitbart.
The Transit Authority is expected to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, said Transit Authority spokesman Jared Lebow.
"This sends a message to people that you can be rewarded if anything happens to you, even if you're committing a crime," Sandusky said. "It's ludicrous."
