Off-duty officer shoots man in Northeast

Police are investigating the shooting of a Northeast Philadelphia man who was critically wounded by an off-duty police officer last night.

The officer shot a man who had been harassing a neighbor, apparently in a dispute over uprooted bushes, police said.

Bryan Finney, 30, of the 1500 block of Lardner Street, in Oxford Circle, was wounded in the shoulder and leg by Officer Raymond Esqulin. Finney was charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, making terroristic threats and resisting arrest, police said this morning.

He was in critical but stable condition at Albert Einstein Medical Center.

The shooting is under investigation by Northeast Detectives and Internal Affairs. Esqulin has been assigned to desk duty until that inquiry is completed.

The incident began about 8 p.m. when man in the 1500 block of Lardner Street called Esqulin, who lives nearby and told him Finney was frightening him, trying to crawl into bushes in front of his home and standing in the road to block traffic.

When Esqulin came over to help, Finney tried to attack the officer, chasing him around a car, police said. Esqulin then shot him, police said.

Northeast Division detectives investigated at the scene, as did members of the Internal Affairs unit, which routinely probes shootings that involve officers. A Northeast Division supervisor said yesterday that the precise nature of the dispute between Finney and his neighbor was unclear, but seemed to arise over some bushes having been uprooted.