The rookie NYPD officer critically hurt when a hatchet-wielding stranger ambushed him and three colleagues as they posed for a photo in Queens last fall tells NBC 4 New York in his first comments since the brazen attack he thought he was going to die. Officer Kenneth Healey, 25, and three other NYPD officers were on patrol on Jamaica Avenue in October when they stopped to let a freelance photographer take their photo. As the officers posed for the photo, a man named Zale Thompson charged them with an 18-inch hatchet, gashing Healey in the head and wounding another officer in the arm. Two other officers shot and killed Thompson on the street, and authorities said he was still holding the hatchet when he was pronounced dead. Healey, who had only been on the job four months at the time of the attack, told NBC 4 New York in an exclusive interview he didn't think it was possible to get hurt that hard and survive.
