Though he was in violation of parole and wanted for a Manhattan murder, Sean Pritchett said yesterday it wasn’t an arrest the cops were looking for when they burst into his apartment in 1995 – it was an execution.
Pritchett testified yesterday in Queens Supreme Court that he was shot 40 times [ill: cq: ]as he ducked for cover in a closet, and then dragged from the bedroom, down a hall and out to the front door. He said that’s when the cops tried to put a final nail in his coffin.
“Hey Sean, there’s an ambulance downstairs,” he claims one detective said. ” ‘Do you think you can make it?’ And then he shot me.”
Pritchett said that bullet to the back of his head caused him to lose peripheral vision and suffer seizures. He also has an amputated right leg, a metal rod in his left leg and an amputated index finger. One of his testicles was also shot off.
The wheelchair-bound Pritchett was first convicted in 1997, but an appeals judge overturned all but the gun charge last year because the jury had been improperly charged.
Pritchett is now being retried for attempted murder of the two cops.
Pritchett said that when the police first arrived at the Long Island City apartment – looking to arrest him for gunning down a Manhattan bouncer two months earlier – he was loading his Walkman as he got ready to go outside.
That’s when he heard a commotion outside and, “in the next instant I know, I’m on the ground shot.”
Pritchett said he ran into the closet for cover as his girlfriend fought with the two cops.
During an impassioned cross-examination by prosecutor Brad Leventhal, Pritchett admitted he was on the run and “would rather die than go back to prison.”
Leventhal later asked Pritchett how he had enough time to crawl into the closet if two cops had him at gunpoint.
“What were the cops doing, playing cards?” he asked.