Man wounded by off-duty Philadelphia police officer

An off-duty police officer shot and critically wounded a man who had been harassing a neighbor in Northeast Philadelphia on Sunday night, apparently in a dispute over uprooted bushes, police said.

Bryan Finney, 30, of the 1500 block of Lardner Street, in Oxford Circle, was shot in the leg and shoulder by Officer Raymond Esqulin.

Esqulin had been summoned by a neighbor who said Finney was behaving "in a frightening way" and had tried to crawl into the bushes in front of his home on Lardner Street about 8 p.m. When Esqulin approached, Finney tried to attack him and chased him around a car, police said, and the officer shot him.

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

He was charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, making terroristic threats and resisting arrest, police said yesterday.

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

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.