Officer shot in Suffolk returns home from hospital

Dozens of well-wishers turned out when officer Mark Collins left Stony Brook University Medical Center on Sunday.

Courtesy Pam Robinson

North Bellmorite Mark Collins, who is a Suffolk County plainclothes police officer, was shot while on the job at 11:59 p.m. on March 11.

Courtesy Mark Collins

Sheldon Leftenant

Courtesy Suffolk County Police

Collins, center, was a chief of the North Bellmore Fire Department from 2010 through 2014. He is pictured above working with firefighters on the scene of a basement blaze in a local home on June 17, 2013.

By Bill Kelly/Herald

Collins waved to the crowd as he left Stony Brook.

Courtesy Pam Robinson

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A Suffolk County Police Department officer, who is a lifelong North Bellmore resident and commissioner of the North Bellmore Fire District, was shot twice –– once in the neck and once in the hip –– during a traffic stop in Huntington Station close to midnight on March 11, according to Suffolk police officials.

On March 15, the decorated officer returned home from the hospital.

Mark Collins, 35, a plainclothes officer who was assigned to the 2nd Precinct Crime Section Gang Unit in Suffolk, was on duty in an unmarked car when he made the stop on Mercer Court in Huntington Station. Four men were in the stopped vehicle; police identified three as gang members.

One of the men, Sheldon Leftenant, a 22-year-old Huntington Station native, confronted Collins before shooting him twice and fleeing the scene, officials said. After an intense search for the suspect, police apprehended Leftenant a block from the shooting site around 1 a.m. on March 12.

Collins remained in serious but stable condition in an induced coma at Stony Brook University Hospital through Friday, but officials said his condition improved over the weekend. Wearing a white bandage on his neck to cover one of the bullet wounds he suffered, he left the hospital on Sunday following a brief ceremony attended by dozens of Suffolk police officers and well-wishers.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone was on hand to wish Collins well as he was brought in a wheelchair to an awaiting car that took him home to North Bellmore. Officer Nicholas Guerrero, 36, who was critically injured by a hit-and-run driver last October and was also treated at Stony Brook, was there for Collins as well. Bagpipers played, and two helicopters flew overhead.

“He was touched by the outpouring of support from the Suffolk County Police Department, the North Bellmore Fire Department, family, friends and all those who have offered thoughts and prayers during this trying time,” said Edward Kraus, Collins’s fellow firefighter and friend. “Mark is as humble as they come, so this is all a lot for him. He is, without a doubt, a hero.”