A heroin addict with nearly 20 arrests to his name allegedly dragged a cop along a busy Bronx street while fleeing a traffic stop, forcing another lawman to shoot him — and a jury just handed him an $11 million payday, The Post has learned.
Raoul Lopez took the city to court over the harrowing 2006 run-in that left him partially paralyzed on his right side, and was awarded the eight-figure sum by a Bronx jury on Tuesday.
Lopez, 27 when the encounter happened, was in the midst of “a two-week long bender” and had just scored his latest fix on February 1, 2006, when he rolled through a stop sign, a city lawyer wrote in papers filed in the Bronx Supreme Court case.
Sgt. Philippe Blanchard and Officer Zinos Konstantinides pulled Lopez’s Honda to a stop shortly before noon and ordered him to kill the engine, but he refused to comply, according to the filings.
Instead, when Konstantinides reached inside the car to make a grab at the keys, Lopez hit the gas, dragging the cop into traffic along bustling Grand Concourse, the documents said.
Fearing “that his partner would be maimed or killed if he did not take immediate, forceful action,” Blanchard fired a single shot, striking Lopez in the neck, the city wrote in the papers.
The wound left Lopez in Lincoln Hospital with a litany of injuries detailed across two-and-a-half typed pages in his own lawyer’s filing, including partial paralysis to the right side of his body.
But Lopez fared better in court, ultimately winning an acquittal on a criminal assault charge, while Blanchard’s potentially life-saving action was deemed “not within department guidelines” in an internal NYPD review.
Lopez — who, according to police sources, has 19 lifetime arrests and, by his own admission in court, “about 13” convictions — won again this week, as a Bronx Supreme Court jury awarded him $11 million.
His attorney, Brett Klein, even requested of the jury $6 to $9 million for lost earnings — despite Lopez not being employed at the time of the incident, according to the documents.
“Raoul Lopez was an unarmed motorist who was needlessly shot in the back of his neck during what the police described as a routine traffic stop,” said Klein in a statement. “We are grateful that a Bronx jury has held the City accountable for this wrongful shooting.”
nypost.com
