Michael Miller, NYPD Sergeant, Uses His Finger to Save Himself From Being Shot

Not the sergeant's finger.

Sergeant Michael Miller, 13-year NYPD officer, gets some version of the little Dutch boy award for this story, which, fortunately, he is alive to tell. Miller had pulled over a speeding livery cab in Brooklyn on Saturday and asked Eugene Graves, 30, along with another passenger, to step out of the car. The friend ran off, and Graves struggled -- "too long," according to Miller, who'd felt a gun in the man's pants during a patdown. Graves pulled out the gun, pressing it to Miller's abdomen, and Miller, in the heat of the moment, somehow managed to wedge his finger between the hammer and the cylinder of the gun, preventing it from firing.

The New York Times reports,

"I could feel a really sharp burning pain in my finger, kind of like my nail was being bent back," said the sergeant said.

Two uniformed officers arrived and raced over. At last Sergeant Miller twisted the revolver away.

"At that point I was completely winded, gassed," he said. "I had a little bit of shock. And it sunk in then what happened. I realized that my ring finger around the nail bed had been wedged between the hammer and the cylinder of the gun and basically getting crushed in there."

"During the course of the fight at one point I felt the gun right up against my belly."

Graves was arrested on charges of "attempted murder of a police officer, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a controlled substance." Miller, who's been called and congratulated by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, is okay, except for a broken finger.

Do not try this at home, or anywhere else.

Officer Saved at Gunpoint by His Own Wedged Finger [NYT]

[JDoll / @thisisjendoll]

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